NASA PRESS RELEASE
NASA will recognize Armadillo Aerospace, the winner of the 2008 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, during a ceremony at 10 a.m. on Dec. 5 at NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street, SW, Washington. The winning vehicle successfully demonstrated some of the technologies needed for a lunar lander capable of ferrying payloads or humans back and forth between lunar orbit and the moon’s surface.
Continue reading ‘NASA to Recognize Armadillo for Winning Phase 1 of Lunar Lander Challenge’
Microgravity Enterprise, Inc. will provide Space2O—a bottled space water product—for participating teams in the 2008 Regolith Excavation Challenge, a national competition involving 25 teams from across the U.S. The event requires teams to build an effective roving lunar excavator that collects and places into a collector 150 kg of lunar simulant within 30 minutes for eligibility in winning NASA’s $750,000.
“The Regolith Excavation Challenge invites innovation,” says Darryl Hupfer, MEI’s VP for Marketing working with vendors and distributors, “and that resonates with our own drive for innovative consumable space products. MEI wants our Space2O at the regolith competition to express our support for the participating teams and their inventive spirit.”
Space2O—is an innovative bottled water product that uses ingredients launched and retrieved from space. On every commercial space flight, MEI donates “free payload space” to educational organizations ranging from K-20 as part of their ACCESS for Education Foundation, a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization that provides educational and public outreach associated with space research, development and commercialization.
Continue reading ‘Microgravity Enterprises to Provide Space Water for Regolith Excavation Challenge Teams’
X PRIZE PRESS RELEASE
The X PRIZE Foundation has announced that the 2008 Lunar Lander Challenge will take place at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico, October 24-25, 2008.
“We are excited about going back to Holloman Air Force Base to conduct the Lunar Lander Challenge this year,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, X Prize Chairman and CEO. “We are thankful for the continued support from the state of New Mexico for private spaceflight.
“The Lunar Lander Challenge is a perfect showcase for the talent and innovation coming from the entrepreneurs who will eventually fly from New Mexico’s Spaceport America. Lunar Lander Challenge teams are ready to fly and we are confident that this is the year someone will win the competition,” he added.
The $2 million Lunar Lander Challenge - which the X Prize manages for NASA - is a two-level competition requiring a vehicle to simulate trips between the Moon’s surface and lunar orbit. The vehicle must fly to an altitude of 50 meters, translate to a landing pad 100 meters away, land safely, and then return following the same path. Two levels have been defined: one with smooth landing pads, the other with a replica lunar surface as an additional difficulty.
Continue reading ‘Lunar Lander Challenge Set for October in New Mexico’
The Space Elevator Blog has an interesting piece about a change at the top of NASA’s Centennial Challenges, a program that funds the Space Elevator Games and other entrepreneurial programs.
Ken Davidian is stepping and will replaced by Andy Petro, a former Johnson Space Flight Center engineer who came to NASA Headquarters in January. In an email, Petro discussed his new position:
“My title is Program Executive for the Innovation Incubator which, in addition to the Centennial Challenges, includes a program to increase the availability of space environment testing opportunities for emerging technologies (such as parabolic aircraft flights and eventually suborbital flights) and a program to bring fresh ideas into NASA by allowing some employees to work for a time in outside organizations.”
You can read the full story here.
