Summer 2024. On the Puys chain, the Lemptégy crater, near Clermont-Ferrand (Puy-de-Dôme), has become the life-size setting for human technical prowess. The tire manufacturer Michelin has released a strange machine from its Auvergne laboratories.
Under the eyes of amazed hikers, enormous blue wheels faced the harsh ground of the volcano and its thirty centimeter stones. Through this test, the company’s scientists sought to reproduce the hostile landscape of the Moon, studded with rocks.
30,000 years old, Lemptégy has already experienced many metamorphoses. Once converted into a volcanic rock quarry and then a tourist attraction, the giant serves as a dress rehearsal for future trips to the Moon.
Because our star once again becomes the object of all fantasies. Fifty years after the Apollo 11 expedition and the first step of astronaut Neil Armstrong in 1969, a handful of men take off again. On April 1, 2026, the departure from Florida of Space Launch System rocket – 98 m high – left a crowd of 400,000 people and television viewers around the world speechless.
The American space agency NASA sent four of its astronauts to fly past the Moon for a ten-day journey. The start of a series of extraordinary missions which aim to install a lunar base from 2028. Called “Artemis”, they will unravel the mysteries of our satellite.
Conditions extrêmes
Michelin engineers are courting NASA, eager to take part in the adventure. They spent several years designing a space tire in a research center in the suburbs of Clermont-Ferrand. A brand new space in the city where the Bibendum builder has reigned since the beginning of the 20th century.
But the French automobile manufacturer is recording sales in free fall in the face of competition from Asian tires, at much lower costs. Losing momentum, the flagship must innovate to put stars in our eyes again.
Its space wheel, even more solid than the blue prototype tested on the volcano, could equip the astromobiles which will explore the Moon. And it will perhaps be she who walks thousands of kilometers on the most hostile ground ever traveled.
“We have manufactured an airless tire in thermoplastic, a deformable and elastic material, which resists extreme terrain,” describes Florian Vilcot, innovation manager at Michelin. If the tire were filled with air and made of rubber, it would shatter like glass. On the Moon, temperatures can go from -240°C to more than 100°C. HAS”
On the silver star, gravity is also six times less strong, and the ground is littered with craters, covered in regolith, a dust of rock and glass. If its dangers are not assessed with infinite precision, the slightest error can be fatal. And NASA, funded by the American taxpayer, demands the best for its astronauts, while reducing costs.
Since the 2000s, it has issued numerous calls for tenders to private consortiums. To join its very closed circle, Michelin joined the business association Intuitive Machines in 2021, which is developing an astro-mobile. In five years, Florian Vilcot has engraved in his mind the extremely demanding specifications of the client.
“As NASA outsources the design and risk-taking on the vehicle, we carried out all our tests independently,” says the engineer. Then she brought us together in Houston (Texas), for a sort of grand oral in May 2025. » Feverishly, the Michelin team then presented the summary of all its checks under the keen eye of the welding expert, then the extreme cold expert or even the radiation expert from legendary space center.
Prestige considérable
NASA must now elect one of the three consortia competing to send a futuristic vehicle aboard the lunar landers. But the answer is slow in coming because its schedule is constantly changing, constrained by the untimely decisions of the Trump administration. Plunged into suspense, Michelin is hopeful. If its project is accepted, the prestige will be considerable and will improve its weakened image, after the closure of several of its French factories.
In Europe, the automobile industry knows that part of its future lies in reconversion into high-tech equipment. By partnering with the space sector, Michelin aspires to soon develop ultra-sophisticated wheels on Earth. To one day equip everyday cars? It’s difficult for our French engineers to project themselves into this future with vague contours. But they can already boast of aiming for the Moon.
