Google Lunar X PRIZE Complete Teams RSS Feed

ARCA has a new visual identity, made by Grapefruit

Bogdan — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 05:22:40 -0700

"ARCA does things for the future, so the association's image must also be oriented to the future", explains Stefan Liute, Grapefruit's strategy manager.

"The parnership with Grapefruit helped us to define our branding strategy, the visual identity change being only its visible result", said Dumitru Popescu, ARCA president.

Under the new visual identity, ARCA will have a new attempt to launch the Helen 2 rocket, its objective: to launch the first Romanian space rocket in suborbital flight and the first flight in international Google Lunar XPrize competition.

Rocket City Space Pioneers Enter the Competition

rcspacepioneer — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:00:01 -0700

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!

Mission 4B equipments were loaded onboard

Bogdan — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 05:45:35 -0700

Today onboard NSSL 281 Constanta were loaded the equipments required for Mission4B. Among these were the new carrier balloon and the helium required for inflation.

Mission 4B scheduled for October 2010

Bogdan — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:51:49 -0700

ARCA completed the construction of a new helium-filled carrier balloon. Starting with September 8, the team will start the launch preparations and training onboard NSSL 281 Constanta Navy ship. Mission 4B is scheduled for the end of October 2010 from the Black Sea.

Video tour of the Astrobotic-CMU lunar expo

Astrobotic — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 09:12:31 -0700

Cloud chamber modelling

SELENE — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 22:33:54 -0700

Some 3-D pictures of the cloud chamber, modelled with Google Sketchup:

The CO₂ supply to drive the expansion diaphragm is a modified CO₂ bike pump with integrated pressure reducer.

Author: M. Bindhammer, Team Selene

Legs

Next Giant Leap — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:51:22 -0700

Check out our facebook photo page for some new renderings of our updated landing gear design!

http://www.facebook.com/NextGiantLeap

Rover Prototype Design

White Label Space — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:13:07 -0700

A new student has joined the White Label Space team at the Tohoku University Space Robotics Lab in Japan. Jérémie Gaboriaud will be in charge of the CAD design of a prototype of the rover to be used in our mission for the Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP).

The starting point for Jérémie's work will be the design configuration used for the recently completed project by Xavier Laurand on the rover's thermal design and analysis. This rover is shown in the picture below.

From this starting point Jérémie will construct additional CAD models to examine different design options for the rover's various subsystems and equipment.

The rover prototype will initially be developed solely for operation on Earth. Its HD camera system, star tracker, and solar panels will provide new research opportunities for the Space Robotics Lab. Once the new test-bed is implemented, each subsystem will be assessed for space-flight readiness and suitability for operation in a lunar environment

Jérémie Gaboriaud is a French student currently studying mechanical engineering as part of a degree through apprenticeship at ICAM (Institut Catholique des Arts et Metiers) in Toulouse, France. His course requires him to undertake a half year internship in a foreign university and for this he chose to work at Tohoku Univeristy under the supervision of professor Kazuya Yoshida on the GLXP project.

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