Michelin's Next Tire Race Win Could Be To The Moon

Forbes

12-04-2025

Michelin is used to succeeding competitively with its tires. The company's breakthrough removable pneumatic tire was used by Charles Terront to win the world's first long-distance cycle race in 1891. But most recently Michelin has been competing in another race – to create a tire for the Artemis lunar rover. The goal here isn't to help the vehicle go faster but overcome challenges that are even greater than you find on a track.
'Today we harvest what has been seeded decades ago,' says Florent Menegaux, CEO, Michelin. 'Now, the question is what seeds we need to provide for the next generation. The lunar project is there to do that. It is there to understand what type of composite would be useful for a type of mobility that is unknown on Earth. That's why this is very important for Michelin.'
Michelin isn't the only company competing to create the tires for the Artemis rover. Goodyear and Bridgestone are also in the running. None of these companies are going to be selling lunar tires by the millions. But the marketing potential from producing a tire that can prevail in the wildly variable conditions of the Moon are astronomical. Of course, without an atmosphere, the Moon isn't ideal for traditional pneumatic rubber approaches, so this is also an opportunity for companies like Michelin to develop their emerging airless technology.
'The second reason why we're developing a lunar tire is because the operating conditions on the Moon are so extreme - things we have not seen before,' says Menegaux. 'The principle of tires is that you have an envelope that encapsulates air, and air does most of the job. What we provide is just the means to manage what the air is good at doing. On the Moon, encapsulating air is not efficient, and you can't have a puncture, because the Moon is either extremely hot or extremely cold. We need to prepare wheels that would be able to operate under those conditions, plus the fact we have no road on the moon, the surface is made of dust, plus rocks. You need your vehicle to operate whatever the conditions. Developing this technology will have a lot of benefits for our day-to-day operations, tires that will be used on Earth.'
To ensure its lunar tires can cope with these conditions, Michelin has been putting prototypes through extensive testing at its R&D center at Ladoux near Clermont-Ferrand. Scale versions of the designs are frozen to -200C. On the dark side of the moon or in shadow, lunar temperatures can rapidly drop to this figure. Conversely, in full sunlight things get hot fast, hitting as much as 100C. It's even possible that half a lunar vehicle could be in shade and the other half in sunlight.
The basis of Michelin's lunar tire is an airless design using polyether ether ketone (PEEK) thermoplastic that has a useful operating temperature up to 250C. The material must be soft and flexible but also rigid. The plastic is a hundred times stiffer than rubber, because of course there is no air pressure to give the tire load resistance. This material will tolerate solar radiation, wide temperature ranges and regolith abrasion. The contact surface is wide like a snowshoe because the regolith is fluffy and volatile, with some steep inclines, so this will be needed to maintain traction. Michelin has recently patented the tread pattern it plans to use.
The Apollo mission's rover was an incredible feat at the time. Its tires were meant to last 40km and were made with metallic mesh, but did fail at the end of the mission. In contrast, the Artemis version could be called upon to endure single journeys of this distance, and last for at least 1,000km. Energy efficiency is paramount, too, because the rover could be required to operate in darkness where there is no opportunity for a solar panel top-up of the vehicle's batteries.
Michelin also uses an extinct volcano at Puys de Dôme as part of its testing process, because the surface material has similar properties to lunar regolith. This fine rocky dust is particularly problematic, because it is both soft and abrasive, without the smoothness of beach sand. Further testing will be performed at ESA's Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, which will have facilities to replicate the Moon's surface with even greater fidelity.
The development process of the lunar rover tire has also required innovative 3D printing techniques, which hasn't been used for this kind of application before. The tire is made of PEEK combined with materials that Michelin is keeping secret. While a lunar tire might seem like a vanity project, it fits perfectly with Michelin's strategy to diversify its business into more general composite materials. Tires are naturally composite, particularly since the advent of radials, which Michelin patented in 1946 and started to produce commercially in 1951, helping the legendary Lancia Aurelia B20 to a class win at Le Mans. The technical innovation here was how to bond metal to rubber.
Michelin has made polymer composite solutions one of its four core business areas, alongside tires (of course), connected services, and lifestyle (such as the Michelin Guide). This encompasses products such as conveyor belts, which can be up to 25km long in a mining context and designed to transport up to 1,000 tons of minerals per hour. Seals are another product that relies on composites, alongside belts and hoses. For example, this would include engine timing belts or precision belts for counting banknotes. Michelin now even makes coated fabrics and films, such as materials for inflatable boats and hydrogen fuel cell membranes (in partnership with Symbio, which is the fuel cell supplier for the Extreme H racing series).
But the highest profile will come from Michelin winning the bid to provide tires for the Artemis rover. 'I am absolutely convinced that when we look at the human race in space, you have plenty of opportunities,' says Menegaux. 'We know that scarcity of resources can be solved by exploiting asteroids. The question is, how do you operate on an asteroid? Because of gravity around Earth and because of the atmosphere, it is extremely costly to start exploring space and exploiting space from Earth. From the Moon, with less atmosphere, it would be less costly to start operating from there. That's why it's very important that we start building a first satellite community on the Moon, so that then we can explore space from there. That's also why we are there. Now is the time to start exploring outside the boundary of our planet. Maybe Mars next, but that's for my successor!'