LAS CRUCES,
NM - Two rival rocket teams are preparing their vehicles here, ready to vie for
cash in this year's Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.
Armadillo
Aerospace and TrueZer0 are making final checks on their respective rocket
gear, ready to take to the sky Oct. 24 and 25 at the Las Cruces International
Airport.
"The Northrop
Grumman Lunar
Lander Challenge is shaping up to be a great competition this year. We have
two teams – the returning favorite and a new, underdog competitor – who are
both prepared to take home some of the $2 million prize purse... if they can," Sarah
Becky Ramsey, Director of Communications for the X Prize Foundation's space
activities in Washington, D.C. told SPACE.com.
Simulated
lunar hops
The
Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge is a two-level, $2 million contest
requiring a rocket-powered vehicle to simulate trips between the moon's surface
and lunar orbit.
The X Prize
Foundation manages the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge for the NASA
Centennial Challenges Program, which provides the prize purse for the
competition.
First time
to fly in the Challenge is TrueZer0, a Chicago, Ill.-based team.
Armadillo
Aerospace, based in Mesquite Texas, is a veteran of the Challenge. This band of
maverick rocketeers flew their hardware at both the 2006 and 2007 X Prize Cup.
Last year,
Armadillo nearly snagged the Level One prize, coming within seconds of triumph.
Engines problems
on their vehicle, however, did not allow the team to hover for the required
90 seconds to win.
Rocket
roaring schedule
Each day's rocket
roaring schedule is as follows: there are three flight windows: 7:30 am, 11 am,
and 2:30 pm. (local Mountain Time). Each window lasts 2.5 hours, and there is a
one hour break in between each window. If everything works as planned, there
will be two flights in each window.
Depending
on the outcome of each flight attempt, the later flight windows are subject to
change - for example, the last flight window on Saturday might not be used if
it is not needed.
This is the
third year we've been operating the Lunar Lander Challenge for NASA...and the
first time that we've had two competitors come," said Brett Alexander,
Executive Director for Space at the X Prize Foundation. "We will have a total
of three vehicles, two from Armadillo and one from TrueZer0," he told SPACE.com.
Live
webcast
Just weeks
ago, the rocket competition had to be moved from neighboring Holloman Air Force
Base in Alamogordo to the airport at Las Cruces.
Reason for
the move, Alexander said, was due to a classified activity at Holloman in a
building close to where Lunar Lander Challenge activities were to be carried
out. "They didn't want any risk to that building."
In quickly moving
the event to the airport, Alexander added, "we needed to keep the footprint
very small of the number of people watching for insurance, cost, and logistics
reasons...just to pull it off in the few weeks we've had to do it."
Alexander
hastened to note that while the event is not open to the public, the
competition will be webcast live at: http://space.xprize.org/webcast
For an up-close look at the 2008 teams,
visit TrueZer0 and Armadillo Aerospace
online.
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