[BRIEF NOTE] On Team Phoenicia

[rfmcdonald]

The Internet compresses social networks wonderfully, enabling all sorts of unlikely connections to come about. One of these more unlikely connections comes via my Will Baird, a long-standing friend from Usenet's soc.history.what-if, who happens to be team leader for Team Phoenicia, one of the entrants in the Google Lunar XPrize to successfully land a mobile probe on the moon.

Team Phoenicia’s lander/rover combination will piggyback on a communications satellite launch to geosynchronous orbit as a “hosted payload.” From there, the lander will separate from the parent craft and make a burn to insert itself into a transit orbit to a direct landing on the lunar South Pole. The descent will be rocket braked, but will deploy airbags in a manner for final landing. Once the lander has righted, the vehicle will deploy a multi wheeled rover and a large fan shaped placard.

The rover will traverse the required 500m while sending back competition specification quality video. Once the first goal is finished, the rover will position to fully spin-up its flywheels. At that point, the vehicle will aim to traverse the remaining 4.5 km for the secondary prize and then function during the lunar night. The intent is to make it through a lunar night without halting operations.

Once the GLXP priorities have been accomplished, the rover will be made available for scientific work on a for-pay basis. While the scientific instruments will be relatively simple, it will be the first on the ground survey near the lunar pole.

The group's blog is here, with more background on the contest over at Wikipedia here.

Go, read, root!