Team Next Giant Leap Blog RSS Feed

Chasing the Dream

Next Giant Leap — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:03:53 -0800

Wow, what a week.
- President Obama's FY2011 budget was unveiled on Monday - BIG changes to NASA ( read why this is not a bad thing: http://bit.ly/cVRlw2 )
- Our partner, Sierra Nevada Corp. won a $20 million CCDev contract to work on Dreamchaser: http://bit.ly/cNwznD
- Monday and Tuesday were spent at JPL with our fellow GLXP teams attending the team summit. It was an absolute pleasure working together with our fellow teams and the XPF staff!

Exhausted but excited by all that's going on!

Chris, Peter and Michael at JPL

On the Flight Path

Next Giant Leap — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 10:34:00 -0800

The MIT student team has uploaded a new video. A compilation of flight test highlights from the early days of powered vehicle tests to controls gains tests in October 2009.

Hop to it!

Next Giant Leap — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:04:28 -0800

Here's a first "sneak peak" at an initial PerspectX rendering of the Next Giant Leap lunar explorer.

This vehicle has the unique capability of flying from location to location while exploring the lunar surface which will be vital for exploring difficult to reach areas such as crater depths, crystal mountains or lava tube caves.

Image by PerspectX

PerspectX visualizes the Next Giant Leap

Next Giant Leap — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:04:31 -0800

PerspectX visualizes the Next Giant Leap

January 22nd , 2010 – RAPID CITY, SD - Next Giant Leap, a space exploration company competing for the Google Lunar X Prize has officially announced the addition of PerspectX to their team. PerspectX specializes in advanced visualization, ranging from storyboarding, to Industrial pre-visualization, digital effects, animation, and interactive software development, primarily for clients in Aerospace, Technology, and Entertainment.
Based in Ogden, Utah, PerspectX is dedicated to the ideal of producing high quality products and services to aid pre-visualization and post production business. They produce 3D digital models, textures, scenes, and tools to aid development in popular 3D applications such as Autodesk Maya, Discreet 3DS Max, NewTek Lightwave, SoftImage XSI, and others.
“We’re excited to be working with Next Giant Leap. This is an exciting opportunity for us to help visualize the mission and hopefully enhance Next Giant Leap's opportunity to win.”, says PerspectX’s president Rex McDonald. He also adds, “For a long time we have been interested in space mission product development for education and entertainment, this is a foray into this industry for us.” “Communicating our concepts to the public and to potential sponsors is a difficult challenge. PerspectX’s ability to create interesting and informative mission animations will be a tremendous boost” said CEO of Next Giant Leap, Michael Joyce. “I am eager to begin working with Rex and the PerspectX team.”

ABOUT NEXT GIANT LEAP

Next Giant Leap is a consortium of industry and academia organized to win the Google Lunar X Prize. The team’s lead systems integrator is Sierra Nevada Corporation, known for its innovation in small spacecraft. In 2008 the Sierra Nevada Corp. Space Systems division was awarded a contract to build 18 Orbcomm satellites with an option for 30 more. Leading the difficult task of final descent and safe landing on the lunar surface is Draper Laboratory. Draper has been involved in space guidance navigation and control since the earliest days of the space program supporting Apollo, the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. The Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the leading engineering institution in the United States, is Next Giant Leap’s key academic partner. The MIT team includes five time Shuttle astronaut Jeff Hoffman and Professor David Miller, head of MIT's Space Systems Laboratory and developer of the innovative SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites) payload on the International Space Station. The MIT team has constructed “Talaris”, a flying earth based “hopper” that allows development and testing of the critical lunar landing and mobility system. Another innovative small company that has partnered with the team is Aurora Flight Sciences, a company that operates on the frontiers of flight with specialties in unmanned aerial vehicles. For more information, please visit www.nextgiantleap.com. For more information about PerspectX, please visit www.perspectx.com.

ABOUT THE GOOGLE LUNAR X PRIZE

The $30 million prize purse is segmented into a $20 million Grand Prize, a $5 million Second Prize and $5 million in bonus prizes. To win the Grand Prize, a team must successfully soft land a privately funded spacecraft on the Moon, rove on the lunar surface for a minimum of 500 meters, and transmit a specific set of video, images and data back to the Earth. For more information about the Google Lunar X PRIZE, please visit www.googlelunarxprize.org.

ABOUT THE X PRIZE FOUNDATION

The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational nonprofit prize institute whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. In 2004, the Foundation captured the world’s attention when the Burt Rutan-led team, backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, built and flew the world’s first private spaceship to win the $10 million ANSARI X PRIZE for suborbital spaceflight. The Foundation has since launched the $10 million Archon X PRIZE for Genomics, the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, and the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE. The Foundation and its revolution partner BT Global Services are creating prizes in Exploration (Space and Oceans), Life Sciences, Energy & Environment, Education and Global Development. The Foundation is widely recognized as the leading model for fostering innovation through competition. For more information, please visit www.xprize.org.

Chris Pavlovski Jumps Aboard Next Giant Leap

Next Giant Leap — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 07:35:41 -0800

Chris Pavlovski Jumps Aboard Next Giant Leap

January 15, 2010 - Next Giant Leap, a space exploration company competing for the Google Lunar X Prize has officially announced the appointment of Chris Pavlovski as their Director of Marketing. Mr. Pavlovski is currently the CEO of JMG - Jolt Media Group Ltd., a privately held digital media company based in Toronto, Canada.

Chris is a veteran in online marketing and advertising. At JMG, Chris works with various advertising agencies and companies including Warner Bros, Universal Studios, Virgin Mobile, Coors, Verizon, Publicis, Omnicom, Yahoo and MTV. He was instrumental in the development of various patent pending advertising formats used by over 50 different fortune 500 companies. His studies included Economics and Computer Science at University of Toronto.

“For most people, space exploration is an old thought. I’m here to change that and bring a new age marketing strategy that will help take NGL to the moon” says Chris Pavlovski. He also adds “Our team is cutting edge, and it’s a privilege to work with institutions, companies and individuals like MIT, Sierra Nevada Corp. and former NASA astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman.” “Reaching for the moon is a bold endeavor that requires a broad spectrum of expertise and talent” said CEO of Next Giant Leap, Michael Joyce. “I am very pleased to have Chris join our team! 2010 will certainly be an exciting year for Next Giant Leap.”

ABOUT NEXT GIANT LEAP

ABOUT THE GOOGLE LUNAR X PRIZE

ABOUT THE X PRIZE FOUNDATION

AIAA Space 2009 Presentations

Next Giant Leap — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:07:35 -0700

Last week's NGL presentations at AIAA Space 2009 conference were well receieved.

The first paper, "Small Lunar Exploration and Delivery System", was presented by Bobby Cohanim of Draper Laboratory.

The second, "A Lunar Hopper Testbed", covers the work of the MIT Talaris project and was presented by Phillip Cunio, a graduate student at the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Here are the slides from these two presentations.

Upcoming AIAA Space 2009 Conference

Next Giant Leap — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:54:29 -0700

Just a quick note for anyone planning to attend the AIAA Space 2009 Conference next week in Pasadena. Next Giant Leap will be presenting two papers on Wednesday, September 16th.

During Session 89-EXPL-11 Advanced Exploration Concepts:

AIAA-2009-6712
Small Lunar Exploration and Delivery System Concept

AIAA-2009-6713
Development of an Earth-Based Prototype for a Lunar Hopper Autonomous Exploration System

More info on the AIAA site

From the Earth to the Moon

Next Giant Leap — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:40:50 -0700

The most critical factor for the NGL business case is cost. Thus cost has been the key driver in the development of our current technical concept.

During the MIT Giant Leaps symposium NGL unveiled details concerning the Launch Vehicle (LV), Trans Lunar Injection (TLI) stage, Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) stage and Final Descent (D2) stage. Developing a solution for the SpaceX Falcon 1e is key to constraining the cost within the limits imposed by our business case.

Inspirational Giant Leaps

Next Giant Leap — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:10:45 -0700

What is the legacy of the Apollo program, and what can we learn from it to help us confront the scientific and engineering challenges of our own time? This short film kicked off the "Giant Leaps" Symposium commemorating the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. The symposium was organized by the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department, and held at MIT on June 11, 2009.

TALARIS

Next Giant Leap — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:54:26 -0700

This short video summarizes the vehicle assembly and flight test activities from approximately April through June 2009.

Talaris is a student project at MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, aiming to produce a small-scale prototype vehicle similar to the Apollo Program's Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV) -- that is, a vehicle that can recreate lunar gravity by using downward-pointing fans to counter 5/6 of the vehicle's weight. A secondary propulsion system (in our case, a compressed gas propulsion system) can then maneuver the vehicle as if it is operating in lunar gravity. This allows direct testing of guidance, navigation and control algorithms for automated robotic lunar landers. The end goal of this work is to feed forward into the design of a Google Lunar X-Prize vehicle being produced by Next Giant Leap.

Additional videos can be found here: http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/talaris