KySat

Video: Cooling electronics on the Moon

Astrobotic, one of the teams in the Google Lunar X-Prize discusses the thermal challenges for its rover design in this YouTube video. How will it remove heat from the on-board electronics?

The most recent stories from teams competing from the prize may be found here.

Wayne

University student Mars rover competition

Competing on behalf of seven institutions, university students recently participated in an event sponsored by the Mars Society to test rover concepts in the Utah desert.

  Teams were given four difficult tasks for the 2008 URC: two scientific analysis tasks and two engineering performance tasks. A Geology Task required teams to perform imaging in both the visible and infrared spectra, while a Soil Characterization Task involved measuring subsurface temperatures, water concentration levels, and pH levels. For both scientific analysis tasks, teams were given 35 minutes to collect data in the field with their rover followed by an additional 35 minutes to analyze the returns, and were then asked to deliver a 15-minute field briefing to the judges.

Perhaps the most sinister of challenges was the Construction Task, which required teams to secure a series of panels by tightening standard nuts and bolts. The target fasteners were placed between 15 and 75 centimeters above the ground and could be tilted forward or backward up to 45 degrees, making this difficult task even more overwhelming. In what ended up being the most dramatic and exciting event of the competition, the Emergency Navigation Task gave teams 35 minutes to deliver a small box of supplies to a distressed astronaut in the field, provided only with his last known coordinates.

Oregon State, the University of Nevada Reno and York University (Toronto, Ontario) finished one, two and three, respectively. The winner also won a trip to the 11th Annual Mars Society convention in August.

Wayne

Mars

Dates for 2008 Lunar Lander Challenge set

The X-Prize Foundation has set the dates for the 2008 Lunar Lander Challenge, according to th blog Beyond 62. The challenge, almost won last year, is designed "to accelerate commercial technological developments supporting the birth of a new generation of Lunar Landers capable of ferrying payloads or humans back and forth between lunar orbit and the lunar surface."

The official release is here.

Wayne

Romanian entrant in Google X-Prize: first to space?

It looks like ARCA, the Romanian entrant in the Google X-Prize Lunar Lander challenge, will make the first flight to space. Lofted to 18k by balloon, a mock up of the European Lunar Lander the team proposes to use will be taken the rest of the way to space by a booster. The team is looking to make the effort in the next three months.

Also newsworthy: four new entrants into the challenge have been announced.

Wayne

Space business plan competition announced

According to the Space 2.0 blog, a space business plan competition for university students will be held in 2009.

The 8th Continent Project Business Plan Competition challenges students in business, engineering and science to collaborate in creating business ventures related to space, but with immediate application on Earth. Teams should consist primarily of graduate students, although undergraduate participation is welcome. Prizes for the winner include up to $50,000 in cash and in-kind services.

The competition is a project of the Colorado School of Mines 8th Continent Project, the "world’s most comprehensive effort to integrate space technology and resources into the global economy."

Here is the video pitch:

Wayne

Space elevator competition: winner must go higher

The Space Elevator blog points out that the rulebook for the climb has been posted and the climb for the power-beaming event has been increased to one kilometer.

If you're not familiar with the idea of a space elevator, originally proposed by science fiction Arthur C. Clarke, check this out.

Wayne

Image: Wikipedia

Robot prizes

Linking to an article on improvements in robotics that we might anticipate in the coming years, Space Prizes mentions a couple of different robot prizes being offered in addition to the Google Lunar X-Prize, which understandably, is garnering a great deal of press these days.

The goal of one of the competitions, the Robot Hide and Seek competition, is to develop a robot that might find a child with intellectual disabilities who might panic in fire and hide in a burning house.

Wayne

Armadillo engine firings and flight video montage

A nicely edited recap of Armadillo Aerospace's activities in the past year has been uploaded to YouTube.

Armadillo presented the video at the just concluded Space Access Conference.

If not for a bit of bad luck the outfit probably would have won the 2007 Lunar Lander Challenge.

The organization, which is extremely open about its work, will progress to high altitude flights as the year goes on, according to RLV and Space Transport.

Wayne   

Choosing a moon lander motor

What kinds of design decisions must be made when choosing a motor for a moon lander? The Southern California Selene Group, which is competing for the Google Lunar X Prize, has posted its take on some engineering and propulsion issues it's currently facing. The latest on the teams and news may be found here.

Wayne

Google moon rover hardware

The teams in the Google Lunar X Prize are actively posting news about their work. One, Astrobotic, has recently contributed pictures of hardware, including a vacuum chamber, actuators, battery, wheel, and a model of the rover.

Wayne

Student rover design challenge

What would a student-designed moon rover look like? Will Pomerantz of the X Prize Foundation reports on results of the 2008 Botball Lunar Design Challenge, which seeks to engage High School and Middle School students in some creative robotics work.

Wayne

Moon 'bot prototype

One of the teams participating in the Google Lunar X Prize challenge has posted this video of a robotic sphere, which as the team's blog entry also points out, has been the subject of a New York Times article.

Wayne

Google Lunar X Prize news on YouTube

News about the major expansion of teams competing for the Google Lunar X Prize has been posted to YouTube. Judging by the sheer number of hits it has received in so short a time, this business of private missions to the Moon excites a lot of people.

Wayne

Armadillo space update + cool pic

Jeff Foust points out that Armadillo Aerospace, which has come close to wining the Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge on a couple of occasions, has updated its blog with some extensive information on recent motor testing. Also included is an image of a proposed single person sub-orbit vehicle, reproduced here. While Armadillo cautions against reading too much into a concept image, it certainly is fun to look at. Image is courtesy of Armadillo Aerospace.

Wayne

Google Lunar X Prize bonus for Florida launch

The winner of the Google Lunar X Prize can collect an additional $2 million just for launching from Florida.

Wayne

Google Lunar X Prize team to land on site of Apollo 11

Space Prizes links to some recent news from one competitor for the Google Lunar X Prize, Carnegie Mellon. The student newspaper, The Tartan, which reported on a recent faculty and student presentation on the Google Lunar X Prize from Pathfinder veteran, Tony Spear, also reported this nugget about the team's plans:

  Due to the moon’s proximity to Earth, the robot will be able to transmit a high-bandwidth reciprocal interaction. Carnegie Mellon’s robot for the competition, which is currently under construction, will have multiple cameras attached to it to satisfy requirements of the competition to transmit video, photos, and information back to Earth.

  The moon rover will land on the site of Apollo 11, where Neil Armstrong first landed on the moon. The robot will transmit high-resolution photo and video images from the momentous site on the moon

A total of ten teams are listed on the competitors' page at the X Prize Foundation. Astrobotic is the CM entry.

Wayne

Google Lunar X Prize

Moon 2.0

If you haven't see this yet, the X Prize Foundation is promoting the Google Lunar X Prize on YouTube.

Wayne

Students to test satellites in the "vomit comet"

As part of the the Nanosat-5 competition, Washington University students will take a ride in NASA's "vomit comet" along with a couple of their satellites, Bandit and Akoya. At just 3 Kg, Bandit is designed to detach and maneuver around Akoya in flight. According to one of the students, "allowing Bandit to free float will give much better data regarding the propulsion system, but it will also present additional challenges due to the speed of the plane and the potential for problems."

The ride is made possible by NASA's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program.

Washington University is one of 11 schools participating in Nanosat-5.

Wayne

University Rover Challenge

Linking to a Mars Society posting, Space Prizes points out that the deadline for entering the organization's University Rover Challenge is near. Teams and their rovers in the challenge will compete in four events:

geology and soil characterization tasks, a basic construction task, and a navigation task that will require teams to deliver emergency supplies to a distressed astronaut in the field.

Entered teams are here.

Wayne

Michio Kaku on space elevators

The Space Elevator blog links to a video of Dr. Michio Kaku talking about the technology on the Discovery Channel Series 2057. His comparison of space elevators to the story of Jack and the Beanstalk is surprising, but apt.

Dr. Kaku also spoke at the IdeaFestival last September.

Wayne

Odyssey Moon: "continued lunar commercial presence"

As mentioned the other day, the Space Show interviewed Dr. Robert (Bob) Richards of Odyssey Moon Ltd., the first official entrant into the Google Moon X Prize. The host, Dr. David Livingston, has since posted a recap of the show here. As you might imagine, the business of space featured prominently in the discussion. Dr. Livingston:

Bob began the discussions by explaining Odyssey Moon Ltd, its general business plan, their unwillingness to redevelop technology or hardware that they can buy commercially, and their plan for a continued lunar commercial presence.

Complete audio is here.

Wayne

High school students to be recognized for space innovation

The winners of the Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation award will be recognized publicly tomorrow at NASA. To compete for the $10,000 award, high school students were asked to document an idea with a business plan that would help the personal spaceflight industry.

From HobbySpace:

Michael Hakimi and Talia Nour-Omid from Los Angeles won first prize in the Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award at the X PRIZE Cup in October 2007. Their winning idea was a device to monitor a human’s vital signs while in space. They received a $5,000 prize and a trophy presented by Nancy Conrad, wife of the late Apollo astronaut Pete Conrad and creator of the prize, and Erik Lindbergh, X PRIZE Foundation Trustee, great-grandson of Charles Lindbergh and designer and sculptor of the trophy. The NASA Innovative Partnerships Program provided a total of $10,000 in grants for the top three teams

Wayne

New space elevator video

As the Space Elevator Blog points out, Spaceminer, an entrant in the 2005 and 2006 space elevator games, has posted four videos of its efforts. I'm embedding the first one below.

Wayne

 

Geospatial Earth studies contest open to high school students

The 2008 Thacher Scholars Awards will be given to secondary school students (grades 9-12) demonstrating the best use of geospatial technologies or data to study Earth. From the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies:

Eligible geospatial tools and data include satellite remote sensing, aerial photography, geographic information systems (GIS), and Global Positioning System (GPS). The main focus of the project must be on the application of the geospatial tool(s) or data to study a problem related to the Earth's environment.

News courtesy of the Oregon Space Grant Consortium blog. A list of 2007 winners is here.

Wayne

Photo set of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge

Space Prizes links to this great Flickr photo set of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. Check them out.

Wayne

Space settlement design contest

Space Prizes links to a National Space Society contest jointly sponsored with NASA Ames for a student-designed space settlement.

Sixth to twelfth grade students should create their space settlement design, or short story, or artwork, and send it to NASA Ames Research Center by March 31st. The grand prize winner will have their work hosted on a NASA web server and NASA will nominate a contestant to receive the NSS Annual Student Space Settlement of the Year Award at the ISDC conference in Dallas this spring.

More information about the long running competition is here.

Wayne

Building reliable rockets

Liked via Space Prizes are a couple of pieces on the Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge that are particularly relevant now that the event is over. One is from Gravity Loss, which noted the technical difficulty of building reliable rocket vehicles without significant financial backing, and the other is from a Popular Science interview with Peter Diamandis of the X-Prize Foundation, who had this to say about a competition that might follow the lunar lander challenge:

We’ve talked about the idea of what we call a Rock and Rove—a small rocket that might go up to 5 or 10,000 feet and then land a robotic rover out in the distance that has to then rove back to the starting line.

Wayne

Space games: So close

The Space Elevator Blog has posted video of the University of Saskatchewan's five runs at the space elevator games. The team, USST, entry just missed out on the prize.

Armadillo Aerospace's entry into the Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge met a fiery end at the Wirefly X-Prize Games, according to Cosmic Log. Personal Spaceflight has more and a link to this official press release from the X-Prize Foundation. The competition ended yesterday.

The lunar lading competition is one of NASA's Centennial Challenges.

Wayne

Ribbons, fire and planetology

Though none were quite fast enough, the University of Saskatchewan's entry in the space elevator games made five runs to the top of the ribbon according to the Space Elevator Blog.

Alan Boyle at Comic Log has more on that story and does his usual splendid job of providing background and additional detail - you know, reporting.

Space journalist Jeff Foust at Personal Spaceflight will be reporting on-site at the Wirefly X-Prize Games, which will feature the Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.

Universe Today reviews a new book, Distant Worlds, about how we've come to understand the Solar System. Containing many maps, illustrations and artists' impressions, the book has a wealth of up to date information about the current state of planetology.

A reminder that the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight kicks off today.

NASA: Discovery has begun its mission to the Space Station. The agency has also provided the image you see above of the wildfires currently burning in southern California.

Image credit: NASA/MODIS Rapid Response

Wayne

The state of personal spaceflight

In a Space.com piece, Patricia Hynes, Director of the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium and the NASA Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) at New Mexico State University, takes stock of the personal spaceflight industry in advance of the Wirefly X-Prize Cup.

Haynes is also the coordinator of 2007 International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight, which will begin tomorrow and run through Thursday.

Space.com also briefly profiles two of the eight teams entered in the Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, Acuity and Armadillo.

Wayne

Changing "public delivery systems"

Tom Vander Ark at the X-Prize Foundation asks "can prizes change behavior? Can prizes change public delivery systems?"

It's a good time to remind you that the Wirefly X-Prize Cup begins runs from October 26 - 28 and will host the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.

The Space Prize blog links to a X-Prize news note on the Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation finalists. According to the X-Prize Foundation, the award will go to the high school students who "develop a new, innovative concept to benefit the personal spaceflight industry within the next 50 years."

Finally, Space Prizes points out that there is a new blog covering the  Space Elevator Games, which have started and run through Sunday. Those of you interested in the games might also want to look here for frequent updates as well.

Wayne