384 000 km
from Earth
129.78°E
-89.67°S
On Monday 19 June, Venturi Group presented its latest invention at the international Paris Air Show in Le Bourget, France: a hyper-deformable Lunar wheel. Venturi Lab designed and manufactured the wheel using materials it created. The Venturi wheel is a world first.
A turning point in the history of the space industry, Venturi has reinvented the wheel. Engineers, chemists and physicists at Venturi Lab in Fribourg, Switzerland have created a unique hyper-deformable lunar wheel.
The wheel will be used on Venturi Astrolab’s rover, a spacecraft that will be deposited on the Moon in 2026 by Space X’s Starship rocket and initially used to transport payloads.
In the past, with the exception of the Apollo missions, space exploration vehicles have always been equipped with rigid wheels. The Venturi wheel, however, is highly malleable while remaining long-lasting and robust.
From 2026, when the rover FLEX is put into service at the lunar South Pole, where extreme temperatures (-240 to +130°C) prevail, the four wheels supporting the two-tonne vehicle (payload included) will warp in order to absorb ground irregularities as the rover travels at 15 km/h. The wheels will need to perform over at least 1,000 kilometres and resist strong radiation from the South Pole.
Features of the Venturi wheel include:
– an exceptional diameter of 930 mm
– a complex system of 192 cables that act as spokes
– a tread made flexible by a newly invented material
– an outer rim equipped with springs
This breakthrough technology, based on unique materials, is equal in importance to the arrival of the rubber, and later pneumatic rimmed tyre in the 19th century.
NASA has selected Venturi Astrolab to test and analyse the Venturi wheel at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The American company SpaceX will be responsible for transporting the rover, which will be the largest and most capable in the history of lunar vehicles. SpaceX will use its Starship launch and landing system to transport the astromobile to the lunar surface.
At Choose France, the summit dedicated to France’s economic attractiveness, Venturi Space announced a €250 million investment in France to establish its new 16,000 sq m technology centre in Toulouse.
NASA announced today that it has selected the US-based company Venturi Astrolab, Inc. (Astrolab) as one of two providers of a crewed lunar rover for the Artemis campaign, advancing the agency’s plans to establish sustained surface mobility at the lunar South Pole.
Under a contract signed with the European Space Agency (ESA), Venturi Space has been conducting, since 1 January 2026, a risk-reduction study focusing on three key technologies for future lunar rovers.
Five months after being unveiled at the Paris Air Show, the European lunar rover MONA LUNA has successfully completed a test campaign at the European Space Agency’s (ESA) LUNA centre in Cologne, Germany. A key outcome: the vehicle shows remarkable adaptability to loose soil, slopes, and obstacles.
Venturi Space unveils MONA LUNA, its 100% European-built lunar rover. Designed to support the ambitions of the European Space Agency and the French CNES, the vehicle will be built at Venturi Space France's facility in Toulouse. The ultimate aim is to provide Europe with a lunar-capable rover by 2030.
