Rover to retrace Apollo’s footsteps
July 23, 2009
Sun-powered robot will examine lunar junk after four decades By Sally Younger Posted 07.23.2009 at 3:59 pm View Photo Gallery Boiling noons and cryogenic nights will prove two of the hells inflicted upon a sun-fueled rover when it retraces Neil Armstrong’s first steps across the moon in 2011, beaming home high-definition footage along the way. The solar-powered robot, designed by Pittsburg-based Astrobotic Technology, is competing for Google’s Lunar X-Prize of $25 million. Victory or no, the rover will visit Apollo 11’s landing site along the desolate equator, where it intends to study... [Read more]
Oakland firm refines rover designed to land on lunar soil, collect $20M
July 23, 2009
By Mike Cronin TRIBUNE-REVIEW Tuesday, July 21, 2009 Executives of Astrobotic Technology in Oakland believe they are a bit closer to winning a $20 million race to the moon. Company Chairman William “Red” L. Whittaker, a Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor, and his colleagues on Monday showed off their third prototype of a robot they plan to send to the moon in May 2011. The winner of the Google Lunar X PRIZE awarded by a California nonprofit that encourages innovation will be the first robot to land on the moon, travel 500 meters on the lunar surface and send images and... [Read more]
‘Red Rover’ to roam Moon’s surface
July 23, 2009
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — On the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing on the moon, a local company is hoping to get back there. In 22 months, William “Red” Whittaker, a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University, wants a robot to make the trip. He and the Astrobotic team have developed and tested the Red Rover and have gone through a redesign all while depending on the rover’s own landing pad to get it there. MORE Read More →
New design overcomes intense lunar heat
July 19, 2009
The third prototype for Astrobotic Technology’s lunar robot has innovations that will enable it to survive the blistering heat at the Moon’s equator, which is the robot’s destination in May 2011 when it will visit the Apollo 11 site. Noon at the equator is hotter than boiling water: 270 degrees F. The robot beats the heat by keeping a cool side aimed away from the Sun to radiate heat off to the black sky. It travels toward or away from the sun (generally east or west) without turning its radiator into the light. Only the solar cells on the hot side ever face the sun. The robot can... [Read more]
Oakland robotics company shoots for the moon
July 13, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009 By David Templeton, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Competition might not be the mother of invention, but it certainly has inspired robotic innovation at Astrobotic Technology Inc. The space-age robotics company in Oakland already has announced its intent to win the $20 million Google X Prize by being the first to send a mobile robot to the moon and beam back to Earth video images, possibly of the Apollo 11 landing site. Now Astrobotic has announced that it will compete for a $500,000 prize from NASA with a robot it hopes will dig and dump the most simulated lunar dirt during a 30-minute... [Read more]
Astrobotic creates robot to win NASA Moon excavation competition
July 6, 2009
PITTSBURGH, PA – July 6, 2009 – Astrobotic Technology Inc. announced today that it has begun testing a robot designed to win a NASA competition for excavating simulated Moon dirt. The NASA Regolith Excavation Challenge, set for Oct. 17-18 at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, will award $500,000 for the robot that can dig and dump the most simulated lunar dirt during a 30-minute workout. (“Regolith” is the technical term for the soil covering a planet, moon or asteroid.) The Astrobotic robot, developed in collaboration with the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University,... [Read more]
