New Scientist has an article on the contenders for the Google Lunar X Prize. If you haven’t heard of this, it is a contest sponsored by Google to see who can land a rover on the Moon and accomplish a set of pre-assigned tasks. Do this and your team gets a great deal of recognition and $20 million.
The Google Lunar X Prize site details what the rovers need to accomplish: “The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30 million international competition to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth. Teams must be at least 90% privately funded and must be registered to compete by December 31, 2010. The first team to land on the Moon and complete the mission objectives will be awarded $20 million; the full first prize is available until December 31, 2012. After that date, the first prize will drop to $15 million. The second team to do so will be awarded $5 million. Another $5 million will awarded in bonus prizes. The final deadline for winning the prize is December 31, 2014.”
So, on the New Scientist site there photos of some of the more interesting and unique entries. They cover the range of hoppers, wheeled rovers, and, in one case, a sphere-shaped robot reminiscent of a hamster ball. You can see this planned lunar bot in the photo below. Click on the photo to go to the page in the New Scientist article about this creation by Team Frednet, one of the Google X Prize entrants. And look at the video on You Tube of the PicoRover, as it is called. This innovative approach to a lunar rover is very intriguing because it weighs only 500 grams. It certainly won’t need a Saturn 5 to get it to the Moon. And besides, if this design doesn't make it to the Moon, it certainly has a future as a cat toy.
Image: Team Frednet/Joshua Tristancho
More than a dozen teams are racing to claim a $30 million prize for landing a robot rover on the moon – see the most advanced prototypes so far
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Hamster balls and lunar hoppers: meet the X Prize teams
Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:50:14 GMT
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