Gadgetory

welcome to the next great space race the google lunar xprize 30 million dollars in prizes to incentivize private teams to land on the moon surface 33 teams have entered but just five have been selected for six million dollars of interim prizes these milestone prizes will be awarded to the teams that can best demonstrate their ability to land safely on the moon and broadcast high-definition video back here the six million dollars can go a long way with these teams they can use the money to put towards a launch contract which is one of the very first steps in aiming for the moon this portion of the prize the terrestrial miles comprises design for the teams to show google lunar xprize of the XPrize foundation that they have actually created hardware that is on a path for launching and we like to call it significant progress toward launch these tests fall into three basic categories that represent the basic major challenges of landing on the moon first up is the landing itself the team that can demonstrate that it's lander can actually touch down safely do so without crashing into a boulder what Astrobotic is looking for on this test is to have confidence that their navigation system interfaces well with the mast and lander and that it successfully has a safe touchdown we're landing near the Lokus mortis pit it's much rougher terrain than where Apollo landed or any of the older Mars landings we want to guarantee that we're going to be safe when we touch down well this test is really focusing on the key technical challenge of the google lunar xprize which has only been sucessfully done by three government agencies in the past and though private companies have ever done that they are testing the precision guidance of the sensor packages that they have on board this technology's pretty much been used and tested in robotics so it's more the application of this technology so for this flight the critical part of the code that I wrote was the landing site selector so what that software does is given an estimate of where the rocket is with respect to the potential landing zone and given probabilistic estimates of rocky regions verse flat regions it takes that classified data from other software and picks the final actual coordinate destination to send to the vehicle where the mast and vehicle takes over and guides the rocket to that landing spot Astra biotics is actually going to fly other teams to the surface of the moon so that's interesting approach so they're taking other payloads with them as well as their own from touchdown to mission complete 4 GL XP that's the that's the final moon cast that that would be about 50 days and we are of course planning for more surface operations once the initial GL XP moonquest is completed we built a volumetric prototype for a lander it gives the sizing the placement of the various components and add another facility partner facility we're doing the imaging system we're not trying to you know figure out anything dramatically in you the mission itself is dramatic so let's not try and get in too many you know fantastic theories in there so it's a classic we go into Earth parking orbit which the launch vehicle puts us into that's a 55 thousand kilometer apogee orbit we're taking three orbits there then we switching to a lunar orbit a couple of orbits there then we begin descent the final descent burn is about nine minutes 9 to 10 minutes and then we touch down we'll be able to get that money shot that that pic of the moon and the earth of a million miles out that'll be a great pick and then we'll fall back on the moon will go into orbit about the moon take a breath make sure the spacecraft is healthy and once we have the confidence will give the signal and we'll go in and that landing sequence will be pretty fast less than 10 minutes for sure and we'll be hitting our brakes going down to the surface of the Moon and landing on our thrusters so what we're testing today is the very first of our field tests with it we're doing what's called a moist test which we put a hydrogen peroxide in the tanks and we actually check to see that all the systems are go this is more of a technology risk reduction than it is a replication of any landing scenarios flying anything this complex like this is a feat in and of itself and so what we accomplished is for one we have a thruster that's very similar to in both the type and the design to what we'll fly on the actual flight model we have the actual flight software that we will fly so how we determine where the spacecraft it sort of depends on where it is inefficient face when we're out in deep space transiting to the moon will mostly be relying on what are called star tracker images so we take an image of the stars and then using the known locations of the stars in the celestial sphere we can figure out where the spacecraft is pointed so in a combination of work on the spacecraft and work on the ground figure out where it is and where it's pointed next up is imaging with the team demonstrates that it has the ability to broadcast high-definition video across space back to earth to demonstrate sort of very high resolution and high frame rate video is something that is not that easy to do so this is the first test of part-time scientists imaging subsystem and so today part-time scientists is attempting to demonstrate that their imaging system is capable of capturing high-quality still images in later tests they'll move into moving images with with potentially having a rover mounted camera or some sort of moving camera moving through the scene and also demonstrating the pan tilt mechanism for today will be still images and they're pointing their camera at at targets targets for color and also for image quality the reason why you saw is putting up different filters in front of the camera is actually because we have been mixing two different types of cameras so we're having two black and white cameras which are the de parallel ones there were ones for the stereoscopic imaging that we used to do this 3d scanning of the surface and measuring distances to certain focal points and then we have of course the teller lens which is in the middle and the tellanon's is actually different in a way that the the other two cameras actually already color sensor so they're capable of seeing color themselves but the teller lens is a black-and-white sensor one is the quality is better if you use a black-and-white sensor and apply in white cancer fullest so the reason why we've come here to the dfk eye institute is because they have this very awesome space hall which is capable of simulating realistic lunar lighting conditions this moonscape has a few interesting properties one of them is that it's optically realistic so they have the right color and the right formation of the surface to give the shadowing effects and the lighting effects that a camera on the moon would actually be looking at in these tests now it won't be simulated they will be gathering the data and analyze it overnight i would say without doubt that there is rather more work to be done before they qualify for the for the cash prize but this would be for them a big step in the right direction we need to prove that the resolution of the images are good enough to drive that the compression that's required to get all that data down doesn't destroy the images and that we can take nice high color HD images of the beautiful things we're going to see on them yeah so right now we're looking at the user interface for our prototype moon rover on it we can see the images that are fed to it those are used to control the rover and the higher definition images are scream back to earth for the viewing of the public we're measuring the resolution we're looking at the focus at various different ranges looking at the signal illinois's the antibiotic systems it's nice because it has a stereo sensor so two cameras on it you can generate 3d information the two cameras give us a stereo video on the moon the appearance is a little different it's very grey it's very flat the sunlights very bright and so it's hard to tell distances on earth you use things like the bluing of the mountains very far away to understand how far things are we use the stereo cameras to be able to tell distance to things like rocks and craters so we don't get stuck they pass all the requirements with one camera and now they have two so they're more than twice as good for the camera once we've landed will be taking some video and some high definition imagery wherever possible we use consumer technology and upscale or upgraded to space qualification so with imaging we're going to be using some commercial cameras that we've modified and environmentally tested and this will be very cool because they are extremely capable and relatively inexpensive and we'll be flying these things for the first time to another world and when we announce what those cameras are I think people be pretty excited about it finally there's mobility showing that the team can cross 500 meters either above on or even below the surface of the moon octo has decided to use these sand dunes as much like the lunar surface and to go through some of the different paces that the rover will see to include communications as well as mobility and this is an off-the-shelf camera for industrial youth pointed straight up so it's also a parabolic mirror so the camera can see a 360-degree image all the way around the live raw image from the Omni camera here so we can see in front of the rover to the right I I'll show you spot turn we're going to turn 30 degrees to the right yeah so in the front here this is a 3d scanner so it works with the laser we have processing on board the rover that can detect the slope of the ground in front of the rover detect if there's a pit or rock then we can come to an emergency stop tell the operator that information so they can make a decision after landing we send a signal from the ground station then envelope should open then global should goes out from the envelope then touching on the surface of the moon and then trouble more than 500 meters this team has done a very good job of understanding what the requirements are and answering those requirements in a very methodical way they had to design a envelope that will fit on a lander and they had to deploy that envelope going through different vibration and mental tests and then of course they had to work with commercial off-the-shelf hardware not meant for space environments and working through the problems of keeping a thermally stable allowing it to operate in much more austere kinds of places solution to the XPrize requirements is Moonraker the larger the two they have a secondary set of objectives that don't have anything to do with X PRIZE and that is to look into what are termed lava tubes on the moon so they've created a second Rover a much smaller one that can trail behind and at some point the smaller tetris will be lowered into a lava tube in order to collect different kinds of data the rumor has a suspension that allows it to drive at low speeds very capably it's a single pivot suspension so it's got one pivot up front and then all of the rest of the suspension is fixed so as it drives over rocks the wheels will lift and the body will average it doesn't do anything for dynamics but because we're driving so slowly it's a very capable system from the earth to the moon we have a signal propagation delay of 2.5 seconds so when we send a command from Earth it takes 2.5 seconds to reach the moon and from the moon the image feedback that gives a result of that action would be another 2.5 seconds so we press a button to make the robot do something then we see at five seconds later so we have to plan for that in our driving strategy our rubber is small so it's it's four-wheel all four wheels are powered the front two wheels are staring it has a collapsible mast it is powered using solar panels relatively small overall dimensions would be about half a meter by half meter by 40 centimeters so it's almost a cube the four wheeled over is much more efficient out there in the field because it can do more exploring Lee from our definition to go over can move 360 degrees from the top perspective in any direction there is no back end for of no white side left side that gives him a great way of flexibility and freedom to move and that means you won't get stuck easily I think that's the special thing about also it has an active suspension system which means you can lift and lower single legs so after we've landed and after we've done what we need to do with our other science instruments and with our google lunar xprize cameras we're going to take off again we're going to fly across the surface of the moon at least 500 meters maybe more and land again and do the same thing take some panoramic images some HD video and that will be the first extreme jump off planet their vehicle must know not only how to land but then also how to take off again however landing the second time should be easier based on what we've learned from the first time so we will be trying to do if we're taking images of the surface women are on our way in the first time Ryan he's as much that data as possible to make a smooth path for the spacecraft the second time when we go to wind the milestone tests are completed the money has been awarded there's still a long way to go before the first team collects 20 million dollars in its place in history as the first commercial team lane on the moon i'm tim stevens frozen head covering the google lunar xprize