Cybertrucks on the moon. Yes—you read that right. NASA and Tesla are talking about sending an EV to the Red Planet and apparently it could actually serve a useful purpose. The vehicle would clearly have to be extensively retrofitted, including being pressurized like any other spacecraft, but the idea is that it will be deployed on a sample gathering mission.
SpaceX will obviously have a role in this project that would see Elon Musk’s two companies collaborating on a massive undertaking with the world’s most well-known space agency. This concept is gathering momentum and space advocates like the Mars Society are getting behind the exciting electric vehicle-Mars rover endeavor.
The Tesla Cybertruck may be reincarnated as a Mars rover
Now that the Cybertruck is not performing as well in the global EV market as Elon Musk and the Tesla executives would have hoped, perhaps it has a future as a Mars-mobile.
NASA bigwigs are talking to their contemporaries at Tesla and SpaceX and it appears viable that a Cybertruck can be dispatched to Mars to gather soil and rock samples for research on Earth. The idea was put forward during a week-long convention of the nonprofit advocacy group, the Mars Society, in Seattle recently.
The concept is the brainchild of the Mars Society advocacy group
In addition to robotically-controlled Cybertrucks, a future Mars exploration system could also include SpaceX’s Starship super-rocket and a bunch of robots and all-terrain vehicles engineered by Tesla. This is according to Mars Society co-founder Robert Zubrin, business analyst Kent Nebergall, and retired NASA engineer Tony Muscatello, who came up with the concept.
Zubrin said the Starship-based exploration model could even foster progress in future successful crewed missions to Mars. He explained during the Mars Society convention:
“We use Starship to deliver a robotic expedition that has already examined thousands of samples on Mars, gathered from hundreds of kilometers away by helicopters, and tens of kilometers away gathered by rovers, and then we land the crew to do follow-up exploration, including drilling in well-characterized sites to bring up water and see what the life on Mars is.”
What’s the likelihood of the Cybertruck-NASA-SpaceX mission reaching reality?
Perhaps this sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel, but some of the elements of the plan are, at least, theoretically viable and could make their way into a proposal that SpaceX is working on to facilitate NASA’s Mars sample collection strategy.
NASA’s Perseverance rover has done a decent job of collecting samples over the last three years and over two dozen of them are being stored and awaiting collection and delivery to Earth during future missions. Unfortunately, previous plans for delivering the samples were found to be unworkable, which NASA admitted. The failure was attributed to cost and timing, according to NASA administrator Bill Nelson:
“The bottom line is, an $11 billion budget is too expensive, and a 2040 return date is too far away.”
NASA is funding 7 concept studies to get around the sample delivery conundrum
NASA has invited proposals for alternative concepts for Mars sample return missions. Funsing will be made available for concept studies carried out by seven industry stakeholders. SpaceX has joined this race with its Starship at the heart of its ambitious plan.
Some of the other companies that are submitting proposals are Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Quantum Space, Northrop Grumman, and Whittinghill Aerospace.
Elon Musk put forward on his social media platform X that a pressurized version of the Cybertruck could be the “official truck of Mars,” indicating that he’s considering the undertaking with seriousness. Tesla could use a boost, seeing as its EVs are not performing well in key markets in 2025.