Caterpillar – more commonly known as just CAT – is the brand behind those iconic yellow vehicles used for farming, construction, and mining. Most big and heavy equipment used for large-scale projects is from Caterpillar ever since Holt Manufacturing and C. L. Best Tractor merged in 1925 to form the Peoria, Illinois-based company. They’ve created some of the most useful and innovative machinery from the Model 20 Track-Type Tractor introduced in 1927 to the ginormous engines that helped power the Apollo 11 mission to the moon 50 years ago.
As you can imagine, the ingenuity of invention is still a strong feature of the Cat brand – and it’s as futuristic as ever! Their latest breakthroughs involve self-driving, or autonomous, and remote-controlled mining equipment… for NASA to use on the moon. That’s right, NASA is scheduled to return to the lunar surface in 2024 and they have plans to build a permanent base near the orb’s south pole, part of the Artemis program.
Such machinery already exists here on Earth and has been making projects that use them more efficient and safer. These fully or semi-autonomous bulldozers, graders, loaders, and dump trucks could be utilized to build roads, housing and other infrastructure on the moon in the same way they do here on terrestrial sites. Same goes for the operator-less drilling and digging machines but on the moon, they’d be used to mine water, oxygen-rich rocks, and moon dust for use in 3D printing of various materials.
“We’ve had a longstanding relationship with NASA,” said Denise Johnson, group president of Caterpillar’s resource industries unit. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if NASA took CAT equipment to build a space camp someday in the future. Which is why developing autonomous equipment is part of Caterpillar CEO Jim Umpleby’s goal in addition to continuously improve upon Caterpillar’s legacy of innovation, of course.
It’s also a way to develop new profit streams for the company in the face of competition and, more recently, the impact of tariffs in the ongoing U.S.–China trade war. The situation with that has put a ding in Caterpillars earnings because the company currently derives 5%–10% of its sales from China.
Clare Skelly, the space agency’s spokesperson said that NASA and CAT’s most recent collaboration was a research project from 2004 to 2013. She said: “The partnership focused on two technology areas: construction and robotic operations. There are many synergies between what NASA needs to meet exploration goals and Caterpillar technologies used every day on Earth.”
There is one major obstacle that is yet to be figured out – how to get such big equipment to the moon. “I don’t know if we’ve thought that far ahead,” Johnson said. For now, it doesn’t make much economic sense to haul construction equipment to the Moon just to gather rocks, dust, and water for a lunar outpost. The only justification they have for using semi-autonomous vehicles on the Moon is to cut down on how much dangerous construction work astronauts would have to do themselves. Until they can justify it economically as well, the machines will likely remain Earth-bound.
