 It might seem insane that NASA sent cars to the moon with the final three Apollo lunar landing missions, but how exactly did the rovers get to the moon's surface? That's what we're looking at today on Vintage Space. So first, a little bit of a backstory. It wasn't until 1970 that NASA really looked at the idea of using a lunar rover on later Apollo missions. The idea was to give astronauts better surface mobility, allowing them to cover a greater distance during their relatively short lunar stays. It would also be a way for them to carry more gear and recover more rocks from the moon's surface, bringing it back to the lunar module to eventually bring it home. But the lunar environment is not the Earth's environment, and so a lunar rover couldn't just be a land rover. It had to be specifically designed for the moon. The vehicle had to be lightweight but sturdy enough to carry two men, their tools and all the rocks they would gather, across a variety of terrains and also function in different temperatures as it roved across the moon's surface. And of course it had to do all that without bouncing them out of their seats in the one-sixth gravity of the moon. The final vehicle was lightweight and sturdy. It was an open design with wire mesh wheels designed to not sink into the lunar regolith. Seat belts kept the astronauts in their seats, and there were places to store all of their tools. But the lunar rover would be completely useless if engineers couldn't figure out a way to get it to the moon's surface and also figure out a way for astronauts to deploy it and use it for any of their bulky lunar EVA gloves. So here's where it gets interesting. The solution was to fold the lunar rover into itself and pack it in quadrant one of four available storage bays on the lunar module's descent stage. It was stored with the bottom of its central chassis or frame facing out, and its forward or rear chassis section folded onto that center section with the wire mesh wheels folded on top of those. Deployment began with one of the astronauts pulling a cable attached to the rover's aft chassis before handing it off to his moonwalking companion who would hold it taut. Next, the astronaut would climb up the lunar module's ladder to pull a D-ring, releasing the rover's upper restraint and allowing it to fall about five inches away from the spacecraft. As it lowered to the surface, two support cables released that in turn triggered a push-off tube that moved the rover's center of gravity outward away from the lunar module. Release pins on the chassis also pulled out, letting the base of the vehicle unfold. The wheels sprung into their deployed positions thanks to torsion bars. Finally, telescoping bars made sure the rover moved away from the spacecraft as the wheels hit the dust. Once on the surface, the astronauts just had to set up their seats, put in their footholds and the central control panel, and then they were off to robe the moon. And the lunar rovers did exactly what they were designed to do. They seriously increased the amount of ground the later missions were able to cover during those brief EVAs on the surface. Apollo's 11, 12 and 14 covered a total combined distance of about 4.4 miles. Apollo 15, the first to fly with a lunar rover, more than tripled that record, covering a total of 17 miles. Apollo 16 covered 16.8 miles, and Apollo 17 set the record, covering 22.2 miles. All three missions left their lunar rovers on the moon's surface. They weren't designed to come back to Earth, but they did have cameras, and it was the cameras on board those lunar rovers that allowed NASA to watch the missions taking off from the moon. Do you guys have more questions about lunar rovers or driving on the moon or anything related to long duration EVAs? Let me know what's in your mind in the comment section below, and of course questions you have relating to all old-timey space things and also things you would like to see covered in future episodes. Be sure to follow me on Twitter and Instagram for daily-ish, vintage-space-ish content. And with new videos going up right here every single week, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.