Welcome to the Rocket City Space Pioneers Team blog. We are a Huntsville, Alabama-based team, and our team is comprised of several private businesses, an educational institution and two non-profit organizations. We are excited to enter the GLXP competition!
Huntsville is known as “The Rocket City” for its impact on space exploration, so it is only fitting that a Huntsville team should go after this prize. Huntsville has been developing important space technologies since the 1950s when the German scientists headed by Dr. Werner von Braun, brought to the United States at the end of World War II, arrived to develop rocketry for the U.S. Army. Huntsville lofted the first US satellite into orbit—Explorer I—in 1958
We are ready to go back to the moon . . . with new technology and innovation at an affordable cost. We’re ready for the race!
We may be a late comer, but we will be ready to win this race!
The Rocket City Space Pioneers is comprised of the following Huntsville, Alabama, partners: Dynetics (team leader), Teledyne Brown Engineering, Andrews Space, Spaceflight Services, Draper Laboratory, the University of Alabama Huntsville, and the Von Braun Center for Science & Innovation (VCSI). The team is uniquely positioned with a blend of in-depth spacecraft, propulsion systems, and launch integration expertise combined with experience in the commercial spaceflight market.
The Rocket City mission is targeted on a Falcon 9 rocket using a rideshare arrangement brokered by our team member, Spaceflight Services. The Falcon 9 will place several metric tons of payload into a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) comprised of a primary payload and an ESPA-based propulsion module with multiple rideshare payloads. Once in GTO, the primary payload will be deployed along with three secondary payloads. The propulsion module and the remaining three payloads will then separate from the Falcon 9 second stage and will perform a Trans Lunar Injection burn. At the Moon, the propulsion module will make a Lunar Orbit Insertion burn to place it and its payloads in Low Lunar Orbit (LLO). Once in LLO, the propulsion module will deploy the remaining three payloads, including the Rocket City lander. The lander/rover, once jettisoned from the propulsion module, will conduct a braking maneuver to land softly on the lunar surface. Once on the lunar surface, the lander will deploy a small rover which will either be tethered to the primary lander. The rover is capable of driving at least 1 kilometer once it has reached the lunar surface.
TEAM COMPOSITION
Team Lead: Tim Pickens
Dynetics, Propulsion Chief Engineer; Orion Propulsion, Pres & CEO; Plasma Processes, Inc.; Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne lead propulsion designer. He has 15 plus years of experience in aerospace industry, specializing in the design, fabrication and testing of propulsion hardware systems.
Spacecraft Integration: Mike Graves
Department Manager of Space Vehicles with over 18 years of experience space vehicle mechanical design, software development & testing, fabrication, ground operations, and all ground support equipment: Lead project manager for the Fast Affordable Science & Technology Satellite Huntsville (FASTSAT-HSV01) for the DoD Space Test Program.
Mission Design/Avionics/Launch Integration: Jason Andrews
President and CEO of Andrews Space /Spaceflight with over 15 years of experience in the integration of aerospace systems, developing advanced space products and technologies and providing innovative solutions and technical services.
GN&C: Pete Paceley
Draper Laboratory-General Manager Huntsville with over 28 years of experience in the design, development, and certification of commercial and government space systems: Including launch vehicle and spacecraft GNC and avionics systems, pressurized science and cargo modules for Shuttle, unpressurized cargo pallets for Shuttle and ISS, flight support equipment, and ground support equipment.
Structures: Mike Soutullo
TBE Aerospace Chief Engineer with over 30 years of experience in space systems development: Ares I-X Roll Control Chief Engineer; Director– Cargo Mission; PM – ISS Payload Integration; Deputy PM – Payload Mission Integration; Shuttle-Mir Payload Mission and Spacelab ATLAS 1 and 2, ASTRO-1, USMP; Solid Rocket Parachute Reinforcement.
Propulsion: Mark Fisher
Dynetics, Propulsion Dept Mgr withover 20 years of space systems experience: Orion Propulsion, Inc., VP; Miltec Corp, Program Dir; OSP Prog Integration Office, SLI Main Engine Projects Manager, RS-83 Main Engine Project, X-34 Manager and Fastrac Engine Systems lead.
Mission Operations: Barry King
Dynetics Director for Space Test and Operations, 28 years of launch operations experience particularly in the areas of integration, test and mission operations.
Science Package and Student Engagement: John Gregory
UAHuntsville; Director of the Alabama Space Grant Consortium and Alabama NASA EPSCoR Programs; managing 14 programs with “Students Building Spaceflight Hardware” in which students assume responsibility for execution of the entire project, with mentoring from expert professionals.
PLAYA VISTA, CA (September 1, 2010) – Today, theX PRIZE Foundation, an educational non-profit organization that drives innovation through incentive prizes , and LEGO Group, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of play materials for children, announced the winners of MoonBots, a global educational contest. The competition partnered with major technology leaders including Google, Inc., National Instruments and Wired Magazine’s GeekDad blog and challenged students, ranging from ages 9 – 18, to create simulated lunar rovers, using LEGO bricks and MINDSTORM components, similar to those competing for the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, an international competition for privately funded teams to build a rover to land on and explore the surface of the Moon. More than 200 teams from 16 nations representing every continent but Antarctica registered for MoonBots.
Team Landroids of New Jersey, a group of five 8th-grade neighborhood friends who participate in various science competitions and robotics challenges, was named the grand winner of MoonBots. As part of their reward, the team will travel to LEGO’s world headquarters in BIllund, Denmark to tour the LEGO factory and meet with company executives. Second place was awarded to team Shadowed Craters of California and third place was claimed by Team Moonwalk, jointly of New Jersey and Connecticut. All three finalist teams also received registrations and start up kits to compete in the F.I.R.S.T. robotics competitions.
Winners were selected by a team of expert judges including X PRIZE Foundation Trustees Anousheh Ansari, entrepreneur and private astronaut and Dean Kamen, inventor, entrepreneur and founder of the F.I.R.S.T. robotics competitions. Other judges included Master LEGO robot builder Steve Hassenplug and Jeff Kodosky, co-Founder of the engineering firm National Instruments.
“We were overwhelmed by the achievements of the MoonBotsfinalists,” noted Steven Canvin, Community Manager for LEGO MINDSTORMS. “Watching these teams of students—plus their adult coaches and mentors—make their LEGO MINDSTORMS robots autonomously navigate a simulated lunar landscape built from LEGO elements, we have seen firsthand how teams of children engage complex problems and actually find viable solutions. Putting a robot on the surface of the Moon is a tremendous feat, and it was wonderful to give these students a taste of what that would entail. Hopefully, this gives them the confidence and passion move onwards to very successful careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.” The first phase of the competition required students to conduct in-depth research about lunar exploration as well as use Computer Assisted Design (CAD) software mock up a lunar robot. From there, the top 20 teams advanced to the second stage where finalists spent the summer preparing for a live “Mission Webcast,” in which each team’s robot performed a variety of tasks meant to simulate the requirements of the Google Lunar X PRIZE. Each team also completed a video essay about Lunar Exploration as well as a video documentary about their process in the journey of learning about the Google Lunar X PRIZE and STEM related lessons.
“The work these students did this summer was truly spectacular” said William Pomerantz, Senior Director of Space Prizes for the X PRIZE Foundation. “The mission very closely paralleled the work our Google Lunar X PRIZE teams were doing, so we greatly enjoyed watching those technical challenges worked out on a different scale. The new era of lunar exploration is being built on the contribution of people of all ages and nationalities, and it is clear that the MoonBots participants have what it takes to make important contributions.”
For more information about MoonBots and to read about the three winners and all of the other competitors, please visit: www.moonbots.org.
ABOUT THE GOOGLE LUNAR X PRIZE: The $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE is an unprecedented international competition that challenges and inspires engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration. 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. The Grand Prize is $20 million until December 31st 2012; thereafter it will drop to $15 million until December 31st 2014 at which point the competition will be terminated unless extended by Google and the X PRIZE Foundation. 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 Genomics X PRIZE, the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE and the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE. The Foundation, with the support of its partner, BT Global Services, is creating prizes in Space and Ocean Exploration, Life Sciences, Energy and Environment, Education and Global Development. The Foundation is widely recognized as a leader in fostering innovation through competition. For more information, please visit www.xprize.org.
ABOUT THE LEGO GROUP: The LEGO Group is a privately held, family-owned company based in Billund, Denmark. It was founded in 1932, and today, the group is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of play materials for children, employing approximately 5,600 people globally. The LEGO Group is committed to the development of children’s creative and imaginative abilities. LEGO products can be purchased in more than 130 countries. For more information, please visit www.lego.com.
ABOUT LEGO MINDSTORMS: In 1998, The LEGO Group spearheaded the consumer robotics category the company with the launch of the LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Robotics Invention System, that introduced children to the world of robotics, and offering the ability to create their own intelligent, interactive, autonomous LEGO robots. The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robotics toolkits allow children of all ages to design, build, and program their own robots using LEGO building elements, customized hardware, and an easy-to-use icon-based graphical programming language. For more information, please visit mindstorms.lego.com.
ABOUT WIRED / CONDE NAST: Wired.com is your essential daily guide to what's next, delivering the most original and complete take you'll find anywhere on innovation's impact on technology, science, business and culture. Wired.com's award-winning news reporting, unique commentary, authoritative reviews and practical hands-on tutorials make it the go-to site for thoughtful and comprehensive coverage of innovation's impact on all aspects of our lives. Join 14 million of the smartest readers on the planet. Wired.com is part of the Condé Nast Digital Business Group, comprised of Wired.com, Arstechnica.com, Newyorker.com, Golfdigest.com and Reddit.com.
ABOUT NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS National Instruments is transforming the way engineers and scientists design, prototype and deploy systems for measurement, automation and embedded applications. NI empowers customers with off-the-shelf software such as NI LabVIEW and modular cost-effective hardware, and sells to a broad base of more than 30,000 different companies worldwide, with no one customer representing more than 3 percent of revenue and no one industry representing more than 15 percent of revenue. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 5,000 employees and direct operations in more than 40 countries. For the past 10 years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America. For more information, please visit www.ni.com.
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.
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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.
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.
"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.
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.
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).
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
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