Cooperative mobility
Two rovers, each below 5 kg, navigating side-by-side across regolith too rough for orthodox machines.
METU · Chang'e-8 Lunar Mission
CHERI
Challenging Environment Exploration Rovers for Intelligence
Two autonomous micro rovers built to map, navigate and survive the darkest frontier of the lunar south pole.
An autonomous expedition
to the edge of the lit world.
CHERI is a collaborative lunar exploration initiative conducted within the framework of the Chang'e-8 Mission. From Middle East Technical University, the project is developing two lightweight, cooperative micro rovers tasked with scientific operations on the lunar south pole, specifically the Leibniz Beta region, where sunlight rakes the horizon and shadows hold ice older than civilisation.
Autonomous intelligence
The rovers plan, perceive and decide on the lunar surface themselves, without waiting for ground-station commands from Earth.
Survivability
Built to endure the full lunar cycle: 14 Earth-days of sunlight at +80 °C, followed by 14 Earth-days of darkness at −200 °C.
Compact by mass.
Defiant by design.
v2 · engineering model
Six disciplines.
One coherent intelligence.
Guidance, Navigation & Control
Inertial sensors fused with stereo vision and event cameras drive autonomous localisation across GPS-denied lunar terrain.
Mesh Communication
A decentralised, self-organising radio mesh keeps rover-to-rover and rover-to-lander links alive: fault-tolerant by construction.
Power Management
Solar harvesting and battery scheduling balance traverse, science and survival modes across the long lunar duty cycle.
Thermal Protection
Multi-layer insulation, controlled heat paths and selective surfaces keep electronics within survival limits across the 14-day lunar day and 14-day lunar night.
Composite Panels
Custom composite panels do triple duty: load-bearing structure, thermal insulation and UV shielding, keeping the rover beneath the 5 kg envelope.
Cooperative Autonomy
Two rovers exchange perception and plans, splitting exploration tasks and recovering each other from hazards in real time.
Seeing the Moon,
without anyone telling it where it is.
REC · STEREO
FEATURE TRACKING
CH 01 / CH 02
CHERI · GNC
On-board stereo cameras compute depth and motion at every step, while sparse feature tracking lets CHERI localise itself across an unmapped, GPS-denied lunar surface. The same pipeline is shown above in laboratory rehearsal.
Every mission
wears its colours.
The first Turkish rover
on the Moon.
CHERI carries Türkiye to the lunar surface for the first time: designed, built and operated from Ankara, flying with the Chang'e‑8 mission.
The minds
behind the machine.
A multidisciplinary group of engineers, students and researchers at Middle East Technical University.
Additional team biographies will be added as the mission progresses.