Nasa has increased funding for a magnet-powered lunar railway that could move materials around the moon’s surface as part of a scheme exploring various sci-fi-style innovations. Float (Flexible Levitation on a Track) is a project run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and has been advanced to phase two of Nasa’s Innovative Advanced Concepts programme (NIAC) studies. Other concepts earmarked for development include a pulsed plasma rocket to reduce travel times between Earth and any destination in the solar system and a large optical observatory in space. The lunar railway system, which could be operational within the next decade, would provide “reliable, autonomous and efficient payload transport on the Moon”.

It could play a role in moving tons of regolith around the surface, which could be mined for various resources to be used by astronauts or at a lunar base.