Space Forum / Space Flight / September 2005

I'll try asking this again.  I cannot find the reasons why the two
Lunokhod rovers "died".  I assume it had to do with battery charging
after the long lunar night.  If we used some means to keep the battery
warm, like some sort of isotope heater, how much more life could we get
out of a rover today?

Next question, as my particular interest is lunar lava tubes, how could
we illuminate the inside of one to get pics and data.  A visible light
flash?  How about IR, would we get any more data from that?  If we were
lucky enough to find one with a smooth floor (not unknown on earth),
would it make sense to have lighting enough to drive into it?  Data
transmission from inside the tube might be iffy so we would go in just
a little way, store images and data and then come back out.

I wish they had outfitted the Apollo lunar rovers with the ability to
recharge their batteries via solar and the ability to be controlled
remotely.  Then, we could have had unmanned rovers in place for a
while.  It might've been possible with 1970 technology.