page_title: Lunar Roving Vehicle
section_title: Locations
hierarchical_section_title: Lunar Roving Vehicle / Usage / Locations
caption_attribution_description: English: Labeled version of image taken by the LRO of the area around the Apollo 17 landing site
context_page_description: The Lunar Roving Vehicle is a battery-powered four-wheeled rover used on the Moon in the last three missions of the American Apollo program during 1971 and 1972. They are popularly known as "Moon buggies", a play on the words "dune buggy".
  Built by Boeing, each LRV has a mass of 460 pounds without payload. It could carry a maximum payload mass of 1,080 pounds including two astronauts, equipment, and lunar samples; and was designed for a top speed of 8 miles per hour, although it actually achieved a top speed of 11.2 miles per hour on its last mission, Apollo 17. They were transported to the Moon folded up in the Lunar Module's Quadrant 1 Bay. After being unpacked, they were driven an average distance of 30 km on each of the three missions, without major incident.
  These three LRVs remain on the Moon.
context_section_description: Four flight-ready LRVs were manufactured, as well as several others for testing and training. Three were transported to and left on the Moon via the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 missions, with the fourth rover used for spare parts on the first three following the cancellation of Apollo 18. Since only the upper stages of the lunar excursion modules could return to lunar orbit from the surface, the vehicles, along with the lower stages were abandoned. As a result, the only lunar rovers on display are test vehicles, trainers, and mock-ups. The rover used on Apollo 15 was left at Hadley-Apennine (
  26.10°N 3.65°E
  ). The rover used on Apollo 16 was left at Descartes (
  8.99°S 15.51°E
  ). The rover used on Apollo 17 was left at Taurus-Littrow (
  20.16°N 30.76°E
  ) and was seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter during passes in 2009 and 2011.
  Several rovers were created for testing, training, or validation purposes. The engineering mockup is on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington. The Qualification Test Unit is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The rover used for vibration testing is on display in the Davidson Saturn V Center at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Additional test units are on display at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Replicas of rovers are on display at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Florida, the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, and the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, Kansas. A replica on loan from the Smithsonian Institution is on display at the Mission: Space attraction at Epcot at the Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida.
caption: LRO image of Apollo 17 site, LRV is in the lower right
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