Australia's First Roaming Robot Named Roo-ver

The name Roo-ver for the Artemis rover robot (photo: YouTube ASA screenshot)

JAKARTA The Australian Space Agency (ASA) announced that the lunar rover they developed would be named Roo-ver. This rover will fly on the Artemis mission.

Prior to being Roo-ver, ASA received more than 8,000 names for the rover robot. Thousands of these names were narrowed by ASA to four, namely Coolamon, Mateship, Kakirra, and Roo-ver.

Around 20,000 Australians were included in the public vote. They were asked to choose one of the four names for the rover robot for nearly two weeks, from November 20 to December 1.

As ASA announced in the end, Roo-ver won with 36 percent of the votes. Kakrra followed with 26 percent, Coolamon with 25 percent, and Mateship with 13 percent.

For information, Roo-ver is a rover robot that will be controlled from Earth. This robot will be launched by the United States Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) on the Artemis mission, namely exploration on the Moon.

Roo-ver will be used to collect soil samples or regolits from the Moon. This regolit will be put in a place NASA will research. The plan, this soil sample will be extracted into oxygen.

ASA said that the early stages of Roo-ver are being built by AROSE and ELO2. Although the first phase was built by two companies at once, ASA plans to choose one of the two to build a second phase.