Gadgetory

welcome to the moon or as close to the moon as you can get here in Japan run the sand dunes just outside of hala Matsu we're team hakuto is testing their Rovers yes they have two Rovers to task in a mobility test the larger one called Moonraker the four-wheeled rover was toast behind it a two-wheeled guy called Tetris the idea is that Moonraker will back up to a skylight on the moon a cavern formed by lava and drops Tetris down within after landing we send a signal from the ground station then envelopes should open then global should post out from the envelope the entire on the surface of the moon this portion of the terrestrial milestone prizes are designed for the teams to show Google Lunar XPrize or the XPrize foundation that they have actually created hardware that is on a path for launching my name is John Walker I'm the rover development leader forty- you can see the camera here and this is an off-the-shelf camera for industrial youth pointed straight up so it's also on top of the rover a parabolic mirror so the camera can see a 360-degree image all the way around this is the operator console we get the live raw image so we could see in front of the rover to the right my name is Nathan Britton I'm one of the engineers on the team I'll show you a spot turn we're going to turn thirty degrees to the right the weather at the moment is quite nice but for the test itself it was actually pretty bad that didn't stop a scrum of Japanese reporters from coming out and filming the event this is a best place a nice place for us to demonstrate the our mobility system our final goal is to contribute to the science the lava tube underground the surface of the Moon is really fascinating today we know that there are several holes and if possible our Rover should go down into the hole the KB is supposed to be the base for in the future so we are going to explore the tape in order to identify the tape is feasible for the future days so then first we complete the 500 meter trouble and approaching to the whole edge of the hole then as an option if we use this teaser system to make underground exploration the judges are not quite willing to commit to saying whether the team was successful but things certainly looked good from where we stand the milestone phase of the google lunar xprize is over the next step is the moon we're still waiting to find out which team will get to the moon first and win that twenty million dollar prize certainly we'll be there to cover it when it happens whether we win the XPrize or not we're going to continue to our journey I'm Tim Stevens foreseen that covering the google lunar xprize