Category Archives: The Moon

Google Lunar X PRIZE team summit roundup

April 18, 2013 TopSpacer 2 Comments

Here’s a report on the recent gathering of Google Lunar X PRIZE teams in Chile: Lunar Roundup: 2013 Team Summit in Chile – Google Lunar X PRIZE.

20 of the teams were available to make presentations at the Summit, and a few key pieces of information came along:

Name Change!: White Label Space recently became based exclusively in Japan, and as a result, they will be changing their team name! While they haven’t finalized the new name, an official announcement and change will be happening soon.

2015 Express!: Moon Express mentioned in their presentation that they are planning for a 2015 launch! This puts them in a tight race with a lot of other teams who have largely mentioned early 2015 as a timeline (e.g. Omega Envoy‘s planned Q2 2015), with Barcelona Moon having a launch service contract for June 2014 and Astrobotic signed up for a launch with SpaceX in October 2015. The race is on…

Masten and NASA!: Astrobotic announced that they have been selected by NASA to fly guidance tests on a Masten Xaero rocket! The helicopter-driven tests (which simulate lunar gravity conditions) will help demonstrate technology for future landers to ‘pull an Armstrong’: make directional adjustments once they’ve realised that their planned landing location is unsafe. Masten Space are the folks who won the 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X CHALLENGE, so that’s a pretty epic triumvirate!

Malaysian launch sites!: Team Independence-X shared a lot of exciting updates, including a couple of potential launch sites in Malaysia: Gong Kedak and Kuantan!

Space Science, The Moon

Shackleton Crater needs roving

April 8, 2013 TopSpacer

Paul Spudis reviews the evidence for water in Shackleton Crater at the Moon’s south pole: The Mystery of Shackleton Crater – The Once and Future Moon.

Activism, The Moon

Crowdsourcing for Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project raises substantial funds

March 21, 2013 TopSpacer

Glad to see that the crowd-sourcing campaign to support the recovery of images of the Moon on magnetic tape date from unmanned lunar probe missions in the 1960s has succeeded in raising substantial funding: Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project – RocketHub.

They didn’t reach their goal of $75k but $62,560 is a lot more than the $10k or so they had just a couple of weeks ago. Help from Boing Boing and others made a big difference in the final push.

Space Science, The Moon

LRO probes the Moon’s permanent shadows

March 6, 2013 TopSpacer

This video describes the areas within some craters at the lunar south polar region that sunlight never reaches. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, however, uses a laser altimeter system to measure the topology of those dark places.