Google Lunar X PRIZE Complete Teams RSS Feed

Team Part-Time Scientists to attract audiences to … Attraktor!

Part-Time-Scientists — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:47:34 -0700

Today, two of our Hamburg-based team members are going to give a presentation at Hamburg’s Attraktor. The aim of this registered society is to bring together people who wanna share their ideas, projects, visions and experience. Be it hackers, coders, sceners, admins, sysops, networkers, cryptologists, mathematicians, electronics technicians, radio operators, model railroaders or lock pickers – everyone is welcome to gather and mingle!

As for the presentation, topics will include an overview of what the Google Lunar X-Prize is all about, details of the mission, status quo of the rover’s development, FPGA development, lander concepts as well as details on our side project ComRay.

In addition, attendees will be witnessing a “world premiere”: for the first time ever, moon rover Asimov Jr. will be operated in front of a live audience!

If you’re located in Hamburg or the surrounding areas, you have no excuse to miss out!

For further details on time and venue, please visit the Attraktor’s homepage (available in German only):
http://www.attraktor.org/

We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible!
Awesome new video footage will be available afterwards on Youtube.

If we caught your attention follow us on , and our Team Blog.

Pressure sensor test

SELENE — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:42:23 -0700

Two pressure sensors have been tested for our upcoming weather balloon experiment:

- Sensor A: Intersema MS5541C, 0..14bar
- Sensor B: Intersema MS5540C, 10..1100mbar

Both sensors have integrated temperature sensors for temperature compensation. The sensors are factory calibrated with calibration values stored inside the sensors. The software reads out the temperature and calibration values and corrects the raw pressure values accordingly.

Two sensor boards were connected to laptop; both boards started simultaneously. Measurement started on 17th floor, then the elevator moved to first floor, up to 25th floor, down to B2, up to 25th and down to 17th.

The time in the plots below is not measured in seconds but in a Δt of roughly 1/2s:

Interpretation:

Sensor A has a relatively large absolute error. Pressure readings are too low (compared to weather report). Error is within the specs of the data sheet.

Differential readings of the sensors are quite similar and plausible: 7.5mbar difference between B2 and 25th floor (floors 4,13,14,24 missing!)

Results on 17th floor at the beginning and at the end of the measurement differ. This is caused by imperfections in temperature compensation. Possibly the temperature sensor and the pressure sensor do not warm up at the same speed, although they are on the same chip.

The “skewed” shape of sensor A’s data is caused by the same effect.

Author: Dr. Lampe, Team Selene

Moon Rover: Move Me With Your Touch

White Label Space — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:10:54 -0700

Andrea Gini and the Tohoku University Space Robotics Lab are pioneering the use of touchscreen technology for planetary exploration. This video of the Kaizen telerobotic control software shows the touchscreen interface in action, commanding the El Dorado II moon rover prototype on a trip through the lab.

We are already planning a smart phone version of the Kaizen software to give ordinary people the chance to take a turn driving our rover on the moon during our Google Lunar X PRIZE mission!

Credit to Kristhian Mason for the fantastic video editing work.

Andrea Gini developed the Kaizen software at Tohoku University as part of his Masters of Science in Space Studies at the International Space University. Andrea is an Information Technology professional, with extensive experience in software design and education, working as a professional consultant and as a teacher in training and certification courses. He already has masters degrees in computer science and scientific journalism. This project was conducted at Tohoku University, the key partner developing the rover for our White Label Space mission in the Google Lunar X PRIZE.

Kaizen is a Japanese word composed of the words KAI (change) and ZEN (better). It refers to a philosophy of constant and never ending improvement in manufacturing, engineering, supporting business processes and management.

***

Expo displays progress toward Google Lunar X Prize

Astrobotic — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:29:49 -0700

A crowd of more than 150 students and faculty packed a lunar expo Thursday in Carnegie Mellon's Planetary Robotics Lab that showcased the progress achieved toward winning the Google Lunar X Prize and creating a sustainable series of exploration missions. The Astrobotic-led mission relies on the experience and technical prowess of the university's Robotics Institute and the inspirations under development by the university's Moon Arts group.

A test article for an attitude control system for the expedition's landing spacecraft is demonstrated by Heather Jones (right), observed by Prof. Lowry Burgess and a film crew from the Moon Arts group.

One table at the expo displayed robot parts created at the university using composite materials; at top center is the project's vacuum chamber.

Chris Pavlovski Selected as Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2010 Finalist

Next Giant Leap — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:54:13 -0700

BOULDER, Colo., Aug. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Chris Pavlovski, Director of Marketing for Next Giant Leap, LLC, has been selected as a finalist for Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur Of The Year 2010 award. Additionally, Chris is the acting CEO of Jolted Media Group, one of the largest online media companies, known for representing the flagship property Jokeroo.com. Through the success of his internet startup, Ernst & Young has selected him as a finalist in the Young Entrepreneur category, for persons under 30.

"Developing and succeeding in my online business has been a thrill, but landing our hopper on the moon with Next Giant Leap would fulfill dreams," says Chris Pavlovski. "Helping humanity build a foundation of knowledge is the mark that we only dream of undertaking in our careers. NGL puts me in the position to finally reach for the stars."

"Chris Pavlovski's innovation and drive to build one of the largest online media companies impressed the judges of this year's Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year program," said Colleen McMorrow, National Director of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards. "The Young Entrepreneur category is truly important, as it provides inspiration to other budding Canadian entrepreneurs and further acknowledges the impact they have on the business community. Chris has greatly demonstrated his ambition and business savvy by capitalizing on both his knowledge and skills."

Next Giant Leap congratulates Chris for this achievement, and wishes him the best throughout the ongoing selection process.

Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year is sponsored nationally by Global TV, National Post, La Presse and RD.

The heat is on!

Part-Time-Scientists — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 03:17:34 -0700

Original at: Part-Time Scientists Blog

Moon Day-/Nighttime Temperature Map; © by NASA

Roving on the moon can be a toasty experience, or a chilly one. The minimum temperature on the lunar surface is -183°C (90K) and the maximum +117°C (390K). This extreme environment can cause significant stresses to the technology used on the moon. One specific stress is due to exposure to the Sun's radiation. During the lunar day, the Sun is shining from above and is also being partially reflected back up from the lunar surface. Ideally, we would like to keep as much of this heat as possible outside of the rover. In addition, there is heat being generated by the electronic components inside the rover. This heat must be transported to the rover's surface where it can be radiated away. Thus, the rover should be designed so that the radiation from outside is reflected away while the heat from inside is brought to the surface and then radiated to open space. To understand how this is accomplished, we need to have a closer look at how most materials respond to heat and radiation.

In this picture you can see the spectrum of the sun and the amount of energy it emits depending on frequency of radiation. The sun itself is a so-called “Black body” and emits the most energy at 5777K, which is a nice bright blue color. The electronics on the other side emit most of its energy at 1000K and below. © by pts.com

When radiation strikes a surface, its energy is reflected, transmitted, or absorbed. In addition any surface will emit radiation. When radiation is reflected, the energy is immediately sent back out into the environment. Transmitted radiation will pass through an object with little or no modification, that means, you can see through it. Radiation energy, which is absorbed by a material, is typically converted into heat energy (or electricity in the case of solar panels). Any material that absorbs radiation is also capable
of emitting radiation. The emitted radiation is typically of the same spectral characteristics as the absorbed radiation. If an object is absorbing more energy than it emits, then its temperature will rise. If an object is emitting more energy than it absorbs, then its temperature will fall. Thermal equilibrium is obtained when the amount of energy emitted by an object equals the amount of energy absorbed by an object. For example, the lunar surface achieves thermal equilibrium at 117°C (390K) when exposed to sunlight, and -183°C (90K) in the shade. The temperature at which thermal equilibrium occurs is dependent on the properties of the material and the spectrum of radiation to which the material is exposed. Thus, the temperature of the surface of the moon is dependent on the material properties of lunar regolith and the spectrum of radiation from the Sun.

A rover on the surface of the moon must be constructed out of materials which behave properly when exposed to the radiation environment of the lunar surface. Ideally, we would like to build the rover out of a material that would be able to reflect the most of the spectrum of the sun on the outside while absorbing very little. On the inside, however, we would like there to be very little reflection or absorption of the infrared radiation generated by the heat of the rover's electronics. Unfortunately, we cannot have it both ways. A material which reflects infrared light from the outside will usually reflect on the inside as well. A rover constructed of this kind of material would turn into a wonderful oven, heated from the inside by its own electronics.

The challenge is to find materials that reflect the spectrum of radiation from the sun, which is predominantly in the visible range, while also absorbing and re-emitting the spectrum of radiation generated by the electronics, which is primarily in the infrared range. We then rely on the ability of the material to reach thermal equilibrium between the infrared radiation being absorbed from the Sun and the electronics with the radiation being emitted by the material back into empty space, which has a temperature of about -271°C (2K).

Surveyor 1 send to moon prior to Apollo missions; © by NASA

Previous NASA missions often used white or silver materials on the parts of the probes that were exposed to light. Other candidate materials include anodized aluminium and gold. Aluminium will typically reflect most of the visible spectrum, but will absorb and emit infrared light. Gold on the other hand reflects infrared through red and orange light and absorbs blue through violet and ultraviolet light. In summary that means: Gold keeps you form getting an cold and Aluminium prevents you from heating up in the sunlight. So for a rover you would use anodized aluminium on top of the rover to reflect the sunlight, absorb the heat from inside and emit it to space and on the bottom gold evaporated foil would be perfect as there’s almost no direct sunlight but infrared light.

Historically, the spacecraft which most closely resemble the rovers being designed for the Google Lunar X-Prize are the Surveyor probes launched by the United States in preparation for the Apollo missions. For more information into the topics discussed in this article, we recommend the following paper available from the NASA archives (page 181ff): Surveyor Program Results.

Authors: Arne Reiners & Daniel Ziegenberg

If we caught your attention follow us on , and our Team Blog.

Wilson cloud chamber for weather balloons, prototype v2

SELENE — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 22:38:15 -0700

A second prototype of a Wilson cloud chamber for weather balloons has been built to test saturations, different pressures and temperatures, clearing field voltages, cameras, illuminations:

Good results were achieved with a line laser for illumination. The alpha emitter is on the top, the laser on the left side.

Prototype 3 to 4 is probably able to be launched with a 2 m diameter hydrogen weather balloon to capture cosmic radiation.

Caterpillar Inc. joins sponsors of Astrobotic expedition

Astrobotic — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:20:55 -0700

PITTSBURGH, PA – August 23, 2010 – Astrobotic Technology, a Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) spin-off company announces that Caterpillar Inc. will be a sponsor its first robotic expedition to the lunar surface. The initial Astrobotic mission will revisit the Apollo 11 site in April 2013 with a five-foot tall, 160-lb. robot broadcasting 3D high-definition video. The mission will carry payloads to the Moon and convey the experience to the world via Internet video access.

The expedition also will claim a financial trifecta: up to $24 million in the Google Lunar X Prize, a $10 million data sale to NASA, and Florida’s $2 million bonus for launching from that state.

In 2007 Caterpillar sponsored Carnegie Mellon’s winning machine in the Urban Challenge, a competition for autonomous vehicles conducted by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The sensors and code base developed for this race of driverless cars through city traffic are evolving into the guidance and control for the spacecraft that will take Astrobotic’s robot to the lunar surface.

“Caterpillar has enjoyed a successful relationship with Carnegie Mellon University over the last two decades. Our sponsorship of CMU’s winning machine in the 2007 Urban Challenge has served as a technology foundation for further work to automate our large mining trucks,” said Eric Reiners, Caterpillar Automation Systems Manager. “Our customers are moving to more remote and harsh environments. This drives the need for further development of autonomous and remote operation of equipment. We look forward to applying the technology developed and lessons learned from the Astrobotic expedition toward our own Cat equipment.”

Carnegie Mellon and Astrobotic have expended more than $3 million creating mission designs and prototype Moon robots engineered to operate during extreme heat -- soil temperatures at the lunar equator hit 224 degrees F at noon.

“Operating during the Moon’s daytime heat is the central engineering challenge for lunar robots, and we will take advantage of Caterpillar’s experience with rugged electronics for harsh environments,” said Dr. Red Whittaker, director of CMU’s Field Robotics Center and founder of Astrobotic Technology.

Caterpillar’s experience in autonomous mining and construction machinery also will assist with learning how to “live off the land” using lunar resources. For example, polar ice deposits can be transformed into propellant to refuel spacecraft for their return to Earth, doubling their productivity. New NASA research shows that some of the polar ice (a mix of water, methane and other compounds) is covered by an insulating layer of dry soil that robotic excavators can remove to access the volatiles.

“Caterpillar makes sustainable progress possible by enabling infrastructure development and resource utilization on every continent on Earth. It only makes sense we would be involved expanding our efforts to the 8th continent, the Moon,” said Reiners.

Astrobotic has just completed the first phase of a NASA contract to design lightweight robotic excavators for this task (see http://astrobotic.net/activities/lunar-construction-research-completed).

IOS Launch may Soon allow Micro-Space “Deep Space, NanoCraft” flight testing.

rpspeck — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 15:17:28 -0700

Micro-Space keeps in touch with “Interorbital Systems”, because they appear to offer the Only Affordable access to space for Experimental Craft which Include Propulsion. (Our PQ-Gemini satellites are prohibited from having a propulsion system.) Progress and Good News follows:

[http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=18780.new#new]
See 8/16/2010 Post with Image of Interorbital Liquid Fuel Tank
(NASASpaceFlight.com Forum > General Space Flight (Atlas, Delta, ESA, Russian, Chinese) > Commercial Launchers (Inc. Orbital COTS/CRS) > Topic: InterOrbital space activities)

Interorbital's CEO Randa Milliron reports that the pictured fuel tank is one being prepared for near term flight tests. Several flights, including one spaceflight with a paying customer, are planned before any orbital attempt, and these will use a single “Module” with a fuel tank like that pictured.

This tank is 24 inches in diameter, and when full of fuel, will bring the Module mass to 4000 pounds. A “Fuel Mass Fraction” of 87% was claimed by Randa (although I am not certain if this included all module hardware in the “inert fraction”, or just the fuel tank and its associated fittings). This is fairly high for a pressure fed, liquid fuel system, and is made possible using either aluminum or thin stainless steel liners and wound fiber reinforcement (Graphite?). Another 6000 to 7000 pound thrust motor is being prepared for static testing, and will be mated with its fuel tank soon. Fuel is the IOS standard, IWFNA (Inhibited White Fuming Nitric Acid) with a hydrocarbon mix dominated by Turpentine. (“Inhibited” refers to small additives in commercial grade WFNA which greatly restrict its reaction with normal Stainless Steel Tanks.)

One lower altitude flight test will be flown at the nearby “Mojave Test Area”, with a 50,000 foot waver clearance. That flight will have a restricted fuel loading to qualify as an Amateur, Class 3 rocket flight. Arrangements have been made for subsequent suborbital flights to be conducted at “Spaceport America” (New Mexico Spaceport). Like the current spaceflights flown by UP Aerospace, those flights can be tracked from the White Sands rocket facility across the low mountains to the east.

Unlike the solid fuel UP Aerospace flights, Interorbital's takeoff will begin at less that 1 g acceleration, with long sustained thrust. Peak altitude is projected to be 100 to 120 miles (Possibly 200 km), and the flights are to be guided. Guidance will use “Secondary Fluid Injection” in the motor (effective only while the motor is running) for these flights. (Differential throttling is planned for guidance of the Orbital Launch Cluster.) One of these 100 to 120 mile altitude flights will carry 100 to 150 pounds of payload for the “Paying Customer” mentioned earlier.

The schedule for flights to orbit with Interorbital vehicles “Has Slipped” (like every schedule in aerospace – Except for Burt Rutan's – since he refuses to reveal any schedule for future events!) Randa implied that the “Customer's” New Mexico flight would occur early next year, with a high altitude test flight before that very likely.

The above picture, and additional information, are Good News for any of us who have been hoping (even Praying) for Interorbital success. No other space launch offers to carry experimental spacecraft with any kind of propulsion (even CO2 or Freon jets)! In my opinion, Interorbital offers the only hope of success with the Google Lunar X PRIZE. With all other launch services, now existing or under development, flying a fueled lander and transfer stage either creates an unacceptable risk to reusable launch hardware, human crew members and other payload systems, or simply costs too much to make the GLXP a good gamble!

Richard Speck, Micro-Space

Initial Wilson cloud chamber design for weather balloons

SELENE — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 21:34:38 -0700

The picture below shows an initial Wilson cloud chamber design for weather balloons:

An interesting article in this regard was published in the July 1948 edition of Popular Science:

Full article

This movie in flash format, made from 25 single images, shows cosmic ray tracks in a homemade Wilson cloud chamber (Credit: Dr. Thomas Rapp, http://www.rapp-instruments.de)