Astrobotic wins NASA award to produce small lunar rover
Astrobotic, in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, has been selected by NASA to receive a Phase II SBIR award to develop a small lunar rover capable of carrying on small scale science and exploration on the Moon and other planetary surfaces.
Astrobotic's CubeRover should weigh in at approximately 4.4 lbs (2 kg). It is designed to utilize its lunar payload delivery service to provide NASA and potential other customers accessibility to the lunar surface at a very low cost.
Following up on the success of Cubesats, the deployment of which opened up satellite access to non-government entities such as smaller scale companies and universities, it is hoped that the CubeRover will use a standardized architecture allowing other members of the space exploration community to develop new systems and instruments that are all compatible with the CubeRover's architecture.
See also: Astrobotic ready to become delivery service to the Moon
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Astrobotic selects Falcon Heavy to launch NASA's VIPER lunar rover
Astrobotic has signed a contract with SpaceX for the launch of its Griffin lunar lander, carrying a NASA lunar rover, on a Falcon Heavy in 2023.
Astrobotic announced April 13 that it selected SpaceX's Falcon Heavy for its Griffin Mission 1 lunar lander mission, which will deliver the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) spacecraft to the south pole of the moon in late 2023. Astrobotic won a NASA competition through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program last year to transport VIPER on its Griffin lunar lander.
[...] VIPER is a NASA mission to investigate permanently shadowed regions of craters at the lunar south pole that may contain deposits of water ice that could serve as resources for future crewed missions. It is designed to operate for 100 days after landing.
NASA originally planned to launch VIPER in 2022, with a mission cost of $250 million. However, NASA postponed the launch to late 2023 to provide more time for work to increase VIPER's mission life from 14 to 100 days. That, in turn, drove up the cost of VIPER to $433.5 million, NASA disclosed in March.
Previously: Astrobotic to Use "CubeRover" to Explore the Moon
NASA Selects Three Companies to Land Science Payloads on the Moon
MoonRanger Robotic Rover Will Seek out Water on the Moon
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:40AM (2 children)
Or so claims their website, they've yet to launch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @04:58AM (1 child)
FYI 1.2mm/kg equals 3/64ths of an inch per 35-1/4 ounces in NASA units.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:51AM
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:56AM
Back in 1990 or so, small companies could receive as much as $250k to develop products that have been requested by government agencies.
You get to retain ownership of the IP and other parts of the product. The Feds just want the product to be available.
My then-business partner and I puzzled over a better way to test condoms but couldn't come up with anything.
Some of the recipient small companies are in my honest opinion cheating: a Caltech schoolmate works for an SBIR recipient that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lockheed. It's not like Lockheed doesn't have the samoleons to develop new products without having to suck off the government tit.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 24 2018, @11:52AM (1 child)
It seems concerning that Astrobotic seems to be obsessed with cubes in space. [nocookie.net]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Saturday March 24 2018, @06:13PM
Or they've been playing Minecraft too long...