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]

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]

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 →

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]

BY Prachi Patel // June 2009 The rover has gone blind. It had been running all night, its two mast-mounted cameras capturing high-resolution stereo images of its surroundings. Now it’s sitting idly in the middle of the room. Fixing the thing is not how Ross Finman had planned to start his day at the lab. Finman, a 19-year-old undergraduate wearing wrinkled black trousers and an old brown leather jacket, uses a laptop to log on wirelessly to the rover’s computer. ”That’s weird,” he says, and tries to restart the cameras. Still no go.... [Read more]

Tim Hornyak for National Geographic News March 9, 2009 Robots might be the first construction workers on the moon, according to a recent NASA-sponsored study. The report says two remote-controlled droids could build a landing site for a lunar outpost in less than six months—offering a safer, cheaper alternative to human-powered construction in the early phases of the project. NASA plans to have a moon base fully operational by 2024. One of the key challenges is first preparing a landing area, because the launchpads would have to protect nearby human habitation, to be built later, from... [Read more]

Red Whittaker’s rovers have already gone where no robot has gone before. Will one of them make it to the moon? By Geoffrey Little Air & Space Magazine, January 01, 2009 The scraping of metal wheels on loose rocks and the clicking sounds of mechanical actuators alert me to the lunar rover’s presence before I see it. Turning, I come face to face with the robot as it emerges from a shallow ditch, its two mast-mounted camera “eyes” gazing at the ground, then tilting up to scout a way forward.  Less than five feet tall and three feet across, it’s an unassuming ’bot: a truncated pyramid... [Read more]

MSNBC/Space.com - A private group planning to launch a moon rover to the famed Apollo 11 landing site in a bid to win a $20 million prize announced an ambitious plan Thursday to send five more spacecraft to explore the lunar poles. The Pittsburgh, Pa.-based firm Astrobotic Technology, Inc., led by Carnegie Mellon University roboticist William “Red” Whittaker, announced plans to launch its first rover to NASA’s Tranquility Base in May 2010 to win the Google Lunar X Prize competition, the company announced Thursday. Astrobotic is one of 14 teams currently in the running for the... [Read more]

(CNN) – When Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon, he uttered unforgettable words. But the next visitor to roam the lunar landscape may send back e-mail instead. One of the teams competing in the Google Lunar X Prize is considering this rover concept for the mission. Welcome to a new kind of space race, where the earthly guest will be a machine and the goal is as much exploration as seeking out new business ventures. The quest is part of the Google Lunar X Prize, which will put $20 million into the hands of the first privately funded team that can land a rover... [Read more]

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]