If you thought that the wide, high-performance tires fitted to a Bugatti Chiron were impressive, just wait until you see what Michelin is cooking up now. The French tire company is creating what is perhaps its most ambitious project yet. An airless tire will likely equip a future lunar vehicle, allowing for sustainable exploration on the lunar surface while still being strong enough to tackle the extreme conditions it would face.

Michelin's R&D teams are aiming for this by 2025, with the ultimate goal being exploration on Mars. The prototype of the airless lunar tire will be displayed at the head offices of Northrop Grumman, a collaborator also working on the project.

NASA's Artemis program intends to send one man and a woman to the moon in 2025. The astronauts will explore the moon in a brand new lunar vehicle while looking for a place to set up base. Michelin notes the American space agency has plans to build a base camp, which reportedly has large amounts of water ice.

Michelin is no stranger to innovation, with a number of past prototypes showing the company's commitment to safety and sustainability. Using this expertise built up over years, the tire manufacture plans to lean heavily on knowledge gained from working with high-technology materials and airless tire solutions.

The company is looking at this opportunity to acquire new knowledge in terms of "mobility solutions." This isn't the first time Michelin has worked with NASA, first providing tires for the space shuttle in the 1990s. Serious rubber is essential to a shuttle landing correctly. In the 2000s, the two paired up yet again to create the Lunar Wheel, specified for exploration vehicles.

Elsewhere, Michelin remains committed to a sustainable future, with plans to produce tires from recycled plastic bottles in the near future. In 2020, the tiremaker created the world's first carbon-neutral tire, called the e.Primacy.