photo #6777416

In April 1971, another view of the installation of the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) in the Lunar Module (LM) at the Kennedy Space Center was captured. The LRV was built to give Apollo astronauts greater mobility during the last three lunar exploration missions: Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17. Designed and developed by the Marshall Space Flight Center and built by the Boeing Company, the LRV was effectively a complex piece of mechanical origami, purpose-built for the rough and dusty environment of the lunar surface.Deployment on the Moon was engineered to be straightforward, even for astronauts wearing bulky spacesuits. Achieved with a system of pulleys and braked reels using ropes and cloth tapes, the rover was folded and stored in Quadrant 1 of the LM with the underside of the chassis facing out. One astronaut would climb the egress ladder on the LM and release the rover, which would then be slowly tilted out by the second astronaut on the ground through the use of reels and tapes. As the rover was let down from the bay, most of the deployment was automatic. The rear wheels folded out and locked in place. When they touched the ground, the front of the rover could be unfolded, the wheels deployed, and the entire frame let down to the surface by pulleys. In the lower gravity of the Moon, the LRV weighed only 76 pounds (34 kg), making the deployment process more manageable.