WSAASS-2025

Dr. Lutz Richter has more than 25 years of experience in space robotics and has been involved in several planetary missions of the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA, and the Japanese Space Agency JAXA, such as the ESA ROSETTA comet rendezvous mission, ESA’s MARS EXPRESS mission with the BEAGLE 2 lander, the highly successful NASA / JPL MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS (MER) which saw sustained Mars rover operations for more than 14 years following landing on Mars, and the JAXA HAYABUSA-2 asteroid sample return mission with the European MASCOT hopping mobile robot. Lutz has led development of several planetary rover mobility systems and of planetary sampling systems, for both technology development and for actual flight, including key roles in the ESA ExoMars rover mobility system and wheel design, and in the ESA ExoMars sample handling system. He has led pre-development of several important instruments slated to fly on lunar missions, namely of an instrumented short drill and a LIBS laser instrument, both intended for in situ detection of volatiles in lunar regolith. He also has been collaborating with entities in China on deriving soil mechanical properties using data from the Chinese lunar rover YUTU-2 and from the Chinese Mars rover ZHURONG. Lutz is President of the International Society of TerrainVehicle Systems (ISTVS), a global non-profit in the field of terramechanics and machinery interacting with natural terrains, both on Earth and on planetary objects. He also is involved in initiatives related to the emerging “lunar economy” which seeks to enable sustained exploration of the Moon. In 2022 he founded Terra Nova Industries (TNI) whose president he is.