Bridgestone is keen to embark beyond Planet Earth, rolling on some pretty radical concepts for all-in-one wheels designed to traverse the Moon. Its latest creations look more like inserts for your hand-held kitchen chopper, but they're designed to support small and medium-sized lunar rovers.
Simply called second-generation lunar rover tires, they are made entirely of steel. That's because rubber doesn't really work in harsh lunar conditions; It's highly susceptible to extreme temperatures and ultraviolet rays, found in abundance on the Moon. Even if the rubber compound didn't deteriorate, it would be exceedingly heavy and inflexible. Plus, air-filled tires aren't optimal for use in the near-vacuum of space, so you'd need a tire anyways.
Bridgestone's solution is to create a metal tire with "tread" on the outside and flexible support structures basically serving as the wheel. The concept on the lower left is designed for smaller rovers that weigh less, hence the fewer number of spokes. The tire on the right is aimed at medium-sized rovers that might wander into rougher terrain. Bridgestone says it balances weight and with durability and capabililty.
These designs are similar to the second-generation lunar tire Bridgestone showcased in 2024, which also featured a flexible inner structure but used a steel wool mesh for tread, arranged in rectangular pads. All of these are radically different from the company's first-generation tire showcased a few years prior, which sort of looked like a tire with a fully enclosed coil spring structure. It even had a cool inner wheel that wouldn't look out of place at Cars & Coffee.
Bridgestone will exhibit its latest space tire at the 40th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, running from April 7-10. The company will be on hand as part of the Japan Space Industry's display.
Source: Bridgestone
