Space.com - Collaborators Off and Running

Lunar X Prize - Collaborators Off and Running  Space.com Astrobotic Technology, Inc. has chosen Raytheon Company to help chase down the Google Lunar X Prize and plan a lunar landing mission. “We have great confidence in Raytheon’s ability to co-develop a spacecraft that can land on a dime,” said William “Red” Whittaker, Astrobotic’s Chief Technology Officer and Lunar Mission Commander. Whittaker announced in September that Astrobotic was joining the race for the Google Lunar X Prize, which offers $30 million for successfully landing a privately funded robotic... [Read more]

Competing for the Google Lunar X Prize

Announcement of the Google Lunar X-Prize catalyzed the formation of Astrobotic Technology. The founders decided to pursue the Google challenge as the kick-off mission in a series of expeditions to robotically pioneer the lunar frontier. The Google race can be won at any time, by the first team to reach the Moon and complete a substantial list of tasks. The winner gets $20 million if the mission takes place before December 31, 2012; at this point, the first prize drops to $15 million through December 2014 and then terminates. The second place team gets $5 million and another $5 million is available... [Read more]

The World Heads to the Moon

The major space-faring nations of the world are heading to the Moon with rovers and crewed expeditions.  China and India are targeting the Moon for mineral and energy  resources to benefit their citizens. NASA has broad objectives, from research to learning how to mount a Mars expedition. Most nations plan to concentrate their exploration on the Moon’s poles, which offer two valuable near-term esources: near-continuous sunlight for electrical power, and water. In the Moon’s equatorial regions, robots and astronauts face a daunting two-week night that’s colder than liquid nitrogen. It’s... [Read more]

Robots for racing and science

Astrobotic’s Chairman and CTO, Red Whittaker, is the founder of the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute. Field robotics comprises machines designed to operate in unstructured or unmapped environments, as opposed to robots created for repetitive tasks in well-defined factory settings. Dr. Whittaker has designed and operationally tested robots that walked into volcanoes in Antarctica and Alaska, harvested crops in the Midwest, mapped underground mines in Pennsylvania and driven through urban traffic in California. He has developed a knowledge base that enables... [Read more]