Lunar Landers Take Flight
After a suspenseful race to the finish, NASA handed out a $1 million prize to Masten Space Systems. The company, based in California, participated in the Northrup Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. The Armadillo team out of Texas earned the $500,000 second place prize.
Each team that competed had to design, build and fly a module from one landing pad to another, and then return. They only had 135 minutes to complete the tasks, and were judged based on the precision and accuracy of their landings. The Masten team had difficulty getting their craft ready to fly for their scheduled attempts on Wednesday and Thursday. However, the judges allowed the team to worth through the night and attempt a flight on Friday, which turned out to be the winning attempt.
The spirit of the competition was similar to that of the $10 million Ansari X-prize, where groups competed to build a privately funded manned space craft. The hope is that new technology will be developed privately, allowing advancement to happen at a more rapid pace.
Comments
Is there any video available of the lunar lander contest. I would love to see it if there was.
Hi Cameron. I have not come across any videos yet, but if they are out there they would likely be on one of the sites I linked to in the post. If you do come across any, please let me know so we can get the word out. Thanks!