The Next Stop

The Lunar Quattro, Audi’s moon rover created with PTScientists, is not just ready for the 384,400-km journey... it is already a Hollywood star!

- Abhilasha Sihag

GLIDING ON THE ROADS? YAWN! THAT’S so 2016. Audi’s Mission to the Moon, which was initiated back in 2015 in partnership with PTScientists—a Berlin-based group of motley researchers and engineers led by Robert Böhme—has created the most tangible and robust lunar exploratory vehicle yet. Humans have set foot on the Moon before (or not, if you’re a big one for conspiracy theories), but this endeavour seeks to perfect spacecrafts and rovers, and make a trip to our closest space entity a lot more manageable.

The Audi Lunar Quattro is innovation and invention at its best. The vehicle has been created to withstand any and every bump the lunar surface throws its way. It will join other illustrious vehicles—three US-built Lunar Roving Vehicles (LRVs) built in the 1970s, two Soviet Union-launched Lunokhod vehicles and Yutu, the Chinese lunar rover that landed on the Moon in 2013. But the Audi Lunar Quattro is likely to be the first private machine to follow.