Gadgetory

I'm Jordan with the verge and I'm here at the Detroit Auto Show where how D is introducing something really exciting a lunar rover that's going to go to the moon as part of Google's XPrize challenge we sat down with one of the scientists to learn more so laughter tell us a little bit about why you built a lunar rover at one point in time Google announced the so called Google X flash challenge it's basically a bet by the two founders of Google who say if you get back to the moon privately and drive 500 meters we give you 30 million dollars and I was hearing about you know this prize and was thinking like why are they doing this you know why is somebody offering money to get back to the moon it was such a crazy situation and you know thinking about this I kind of you know got a lot of friends together with scientists and engineers and we were thinking about is it possible could you do something about it and that's where it all started and seven years later where we are today we've now developed multiple generations of lunar rover prototypes landing module prototypes we are just about to purchase a very large rocket to put it all in and launch to the moon in the first quarter of 2017 so a lot has happened in seven years got it and you've chosen a very historically and scientifically significant landing point for for your craft yeah we're going back to the towers literal valley which is the site that man said last foot on the moon so and it has been a lot of research has been done because it was the only Apollo missions was the site of the Apollo 17 mission was one of the only missions where scientists actually went to the moon so as if one of the set matter of fact it was the actually only mission which generated to me a huge amount of scientific valuable data and this is perfect for us to build upon we have this opportunity to we do this value with much finer equipment and figure out what does anomaly have been caused and also of course expands the range of excavation that has been done there the main mission objective from our mission is not just to get back to the moon itself but actually visit something that's been left on the moon that's the LRV the lunar roving vehicle that's the moon body that the Apollo astronauts used to drive around the moon and it's parked outside of the Apollo 17 landing site about 235 meters we want to go there and study the remains of it it's been on the moon over 43 years exposed to the vast amount of space and to the radiation and to all of the space weather and so this kind of material science helps you to understand what Mateusz you can use to build a lunar base and what's the partnership without he bring to you and the partnership without he actually adds two big values for us of course access to the technology and the engineers at Audi and of course the funding that we need to develop everything we do so for the first thing something was really coolest that already helps us to do all of the optimizations so what it helped us from the very last generation to this generation of the rover to get to weigh down by over ten kilograms using 3d printing technology for example in house so then for example the latest order to just see here it has been sweetie based on sweetie printed aluminium and titanium with special mixes done by Audi for Samba which have a very high strength but very lightweight so Anna just departs are just one millimeter thick then of course we have this electrical drive subsystem where we have highly efficient brushless twice integrated into the wheel which gives us 360 degrees of freedom from the topside perspective and of course from the side perspective so it means that it can traverse the terrain quite a lot that's very guys from Crouch will help us a lot and then you have of course the the each one sector where they guys help us a lot and you can have everything qualified because and it's a very complex system so it's not like you know it's not something where you can pick up it's not a 3d puzzle where you have all the pieces mapped out but you really need to understand all the states where you have there could be in almost everything self-developed from you know starting from the film where level to the PCB layouts and to the half of the programming that you need to do to get things running and that's something that you need to do to get to a level where you have the kind of reliability that you need but also can balance the cost of the rover could make it to the moon within two years but space is hard so good luck to them we'll have much more from the Detroit Auto Show here later this week subscribe for more videos to youtube.com slash The Verge or just check out the verge com