China Announces Chang'e-2 Launch Date and Chang'e-3 Lander Details! November 30, 2009
Posted by Nick Azer in : Chang'e, China, lander , 2comments
The China Daily has reported that China’s lunar program has set the launch date for it’s second lunar orbiter—the Chang’e-2—as well as announced more details of it’s Chang’e-3 lunar lander mission:
“[The Chang'e-2] will orbit 100 km closer to the moon and be equipped with better facilities. We expect to acquire more scientific data about the moon with increased accuracy.” -Ye Peijian, chief designer of the Chang’e-1(“China to take next leap with moon probe“, The China Daily)
The upgraded Change-2 (originally designed as simply a backup for the Chang’e-1) will launch in October 2010.
Meanwhile, they also announced the Chang’e-3 lander’s destination: it will touch down “before 2013″ in the Sinus Iridum—the ’Bay of Rainbows’.
The article also notes the Chinese desire to explore resources on the lunar surface—which of course means helium-3.
The selection of the Sinus Iridum is interesting, then—a potential harvesting hotspot? I’ll have more on the location later this week as I get my new weekly selenography series kicked into gear, so check back for that :)
New 2009 Lunar Lander Challenge Team Announced—BonNovA! October 5, 2009
Posted by Nick Azer in : BonNovA, Google Lunar X Prize, lander, Lunar Lander Challenge 2009, Masten Space Systems , add a commentThe 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge has announced an additional team entering competition—BonNovA!
A veteran of previous years, BonNovA’s Lauryad I+II landers will be attempting prizes on October 26th and 27th in Cantil, CA.
Check out a (very brief) video below of their first test lift-off earlier this year:
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Coming up this week on Wednesday and Thursday is Masten Space Systems‘ next attempts at the prize—stay tuned! :)
Armadillo Aerospace Wins Lunar Lander Challenge Prize (Level 2)! September 13, 2009
Posted by Nick Azer in : Armadillo Aerospace, Google Lunar X Prize, lander, Lunar Lander Challenge 2008, Lunar Lander Challenge 2009 , 2comments
They’ve done it again: after being the first team to win a prize in the annual Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge last year, Armadillo Aerospace had another successful attempt in their 2009 effort yesterday:
They claimed a Level 2 prize. Next week, Masten Space Systems will be doing their own Level One prize attempt, with several attempts at the Level 2 coming in October, followed by Unreasonable Rocket‘s shot at both prizes at the end of the month.
For a lot more great videos on yesterday, check out the official X PRIZE Launch Pad post on it :)
First 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Attempts Announced! August 28, 2009
Posted by Nick Azer in : Google Lunar X Prize, lander, Lunar Lander Challenge 2009, Youtube , add a comment
Over at the X PRIZE Foundation‘s official blog The Launch Pad, they announced the official attempt dates for this year’s Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge!
This year’s format is different than last year‘s—instead of the teams all gathering at one location and one time and competing there, teams can make an attempt on their home turf and on their schedule (before a certain date).
There are three teams announced in this first group:
- Armadillo Aerospace, winners last year (and the first to win a prize at all) will compete on September 12th and 13th in Caddo Mills, TX;
- Masten Space Systems will be aiming at different prizes on three different occassions: September 15-16, October 7-8, and October 28-29 from Mojave, CA; and
- Unreasonable Rocket joins the fray Oct. 30-31st, hoping for treats and not tricks from Cantil, CA.
Keep an eye here for coverage, and check out this great X PRIZE recap video from last year:
Picture of the Week: MoonOne, A Space Odyssey November 17, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Google Lunar X Prize, lander, NASA, Odyssey Moon, Picture of the Week , add a comment
India's Chandrayaan Flags the Moon November 16, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Chandrayaan-1, Current News, Helium-3, Indian Space Research Organization, lander, Peak of Eternal Light, Shackleton, Youtube , 1 comment so far
I’ve been flagging “Chandrayaan” on a lot of my moon posts as of late, but now the Chandrayaan-1 has done me one better, flagging something itself: the Moon.
The craft’s Moon Impact Probe, carrying the Indian Tricolour (pictured above) on its side, landed on the Moon on Friday, making India the fifth (or fourth; videos seems to state fourth, but that linked article from the India Times states fifth) world entity (after the U.S., Russia, Japan, and the 17-nation ESA) to reach the surface of the Moon.
That is a picture the Moon Impact Probe took before impact (from the India Times); the prode landed just 32km from the all-important Shackleton Crater near the South Pole, a very likely location for a future full-fledged colony or colonies (due to its rim being a Peak of Eternal Light, a.k.a. eternal solar power and other benefits). So its likely that future colonists (robotic or otherwise) will come across, or at least take field trips to, this Indian tricolor in the future :)
Below is a great video from CCTV on the Probe’s landing, which rather interestingly, also confirms the active Indian interest in helium-3 (something not mentioned in the official ISRO Moon Impact Probe page):
Astrobotic Technology Announces Details Galore on Series of Commercial Moon Missions (News) October 31, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Astrobotic, Current News, dozer, Google Lunar X Prize, Integration, lander, Lunar Chariot, Obama, private sector, rover, selenography, Shackleton , add a commentToday, Astrobotic Technology (a leading contender for the Google Lunar X Prize) announced a new series of missions as part of their commercial efforts.
“Astrobotic will robotically explore the Moon’s high-interest areas on a commercial basis, collecting information required to design future outposts and to answer scientific questions about the Moon and Earth.”
-David Gump, President of Astrobotic, from their announcement
As part of the announcement, Astrobotic released a White Paper (a ‘white paper’ being an a report or guide that addresses problems and how to solve them, typically seen in business and politics) detailing their program and goals.
In addition to their initial effort for the $20 million Lunar X Prize, TranquilityTrek (which, as David Gump told Space.com for their article today, was “very clear” that it was “going to cost more to win the prize than the prize itself”), Astrobotic will follow with five more missions:
Rovers and landers are pretty commonplace ideas, but the ‘dozer‘ was a new one to me. With some digging (excuse the pun), I found an example: NASA’s Lunar Chariot prototype, which could build roads, dig trenches, or even mine minerals. There’s even some video of it in action, kicking ass and taking names on Earth:
The White Paper has oodles of details on their exact mission plans, particularly the diagram on page 3.
With the X Prize TranquilityTrek slated for Q2 2010, they’ve got their South pole scout (headed for the rim of Shackleton Crater, long considered a prime location for a moon colony) shooting for Q3 2011, with two more missions (a North Pole scout and a ‘Moon Quake 1″ seismic and weather collection mission at Shackleton) set for 2012 and an Ice Surveyor mission going deep into Shackleton itself, followed by the Lunar Dozer mission also at Shackleton Rim, both being conducted in 2013.
So, for Astrobotic alone, that’s 6 total lunar missions in the next four years. Exciting times. And this, of course (and as the White Paper notes), is just the initial slate. Most or all of the rovers will include HD video broadcasting, it sounds like, so we’ll all have a front row seat, to boot.
The general goal of the missions is to build a data library to facilitate other organizations’ (e.g., NASA; Barack Obama, in his space plan, talked of “amplifying NASA’s reach” with the private space sector) and companies’ missions with information for sale, such as detailed terrain maps, allowing future colonial efforts to simply buy the information from Astrobotic at a lower cost that it would take for the efforts to collect the data themselves.
Check out that 4-page White Paper and Astrobotic‘s site for the full skinny on their efforts, and keep an eye here for frequent updates and analysis as they (and other similar companies, such as fellow Google Lunar X Prize competitor Odyssey Moon, Ltd.) progress rapidly towards their mission slate :)