IF PEOPLE are to explore the moon again they will need ways of travelling across the lunar surface and also of digging holes in it. But because America’s space agency, NASA, spends most of its money on the space station and the shuttle, little is left over for the innovative research and development in areas such as these that many people think it should be carrying out in the first place.

The answer NASA has come up with is something it calls its Centennial Challenges. These are a series of prizes for technological achievement in areas such as beamed power, lunar landers and the extraction of oxygen from lunar regolith (the crushed rock that passes for soil on the moon). The point is to spur technological development using the twin lures of hard cash and the kudos of being officially recognised as cleverer than your peers.

On October 18th, therefore, 19 robots competed in the Regolith Excavation Challenge. The three teams behind the winning machines claimed a total of $750,000.

To win, a robot had to excavate 150kg (330lb) of simulated lunar soil and move it into a container in less than half an hour. Worthy and important, of course, but a sideshow to another of the events that is taking place this month. This is the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. And it looks as if, by the time festivities are over on October 31st, much of the $2m prize fund for this particular contest will have been won, too.

Companies that have competed in the lunar lander challenge so far include Armadillo Aerospace, TrueZer0, Masten Space Systems, Unreasonable Rocket and BonNova. Against a tight timeline, the teams must prepare their vehicles to make vertical take-offs, controlled flights and successful landings—and then hop back home again. The easier level of the challenge requires flights of 90 seconds and a landing on a small, flat circular pad. The more difficult second level requires a flight of 180 seconds followed by a landing on simulated lunar terrain, complete with rocks and craters.

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Tags: armadillo aerospace, crushed rock, innovative research, lunar lander challenge, lunar landers, lunar soil, lunar surface, masten space systems, NASA, northrop grumman, regolith excavation challenge, technological achievement

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 5:11 pm and is filed under Consider This, Economist, Innovation, Shape of Things to Come?, economics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.