It's not the fastest or the sleekest, but NASA's Space Exploration Vehicle (SEV) is definitely the coolest car on the planet — and hopefully, before too long, something like it will be the coolest car on other worlds as well.
The SEV is one of NASA’s concepts for a new generation of flexible vehicles that can transport astronauts across near-earth asteroids and Mars. To see what this might be like, we got inside this 6,600-pound behemoth of a machine for a test run.
As you might expect, driving something that’s designed for traipsing across another planet is an out-of-this-world experience.
Join us on the journey:
We begin in the Mars Yard at NASA’s Johnson Kennedy Space Center in Texas, where the SEV currently lives.
It’s called the Mars Yard because NASA has decorated it with hills, small craters, and moderate-sized boulders to simulate some of the rugged terrain astronauts might experience on the Red Planet.
The SEV has a number of advanced features compared to the last manned space car, the lunar rover. For starters, it has an enclosed, pressurized cabin complete with sleeping and sanitary facilities, which can accommodate two astronauts for up to 14 consecutive days — that’s a lot of time to explore!
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