Nasa Seeks Help With Lunar Landing
Help wanted: Nasa moon mission 2018 needs moon lander. Design and build spacecraft capable of taking off vertically, hovering and landing safely. Salary: $2.5m (£1.3m).
As unlikely as it seems Nasa really is looking for help with its latest mission. The US space agency is today launching a competition to find someone to design its latest spacecraft. "The teams that participate in the Lunar Lander Analog Challenge are contributing to Nasa's return to the moon while also accelerating the development of the suborbital spaceflight industry," said Brant Sponberg, Nasa's Centennial Challenges programme manager.
The prize is being run for Nasa by the X-Prize Foundation, the non-profit group that set up the $10m Ansari XPrize. That prize was won in 2004 by Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites in Mojave, California. He designed a re-usable commercial vehicle for ferrying passengers to the edge of space.
The big prize though would be to win the contract to build vehicles for Nasa to use on the moon. For the space agency, funding a prize is much more cost effective than paying for technology development from scratch, said Mr Murphy.
Teams will compete for the prize at the X-Prize Cup Expo in Las Cruces, New Mexico, from October 20 to 22. There are two courses which Mr Murphy labels "difficult" and "very difficult". The winner of the more difficult challenge will take home $1.25m and there are four runner up prizes. If it is not won in October the challenge will roll over until 2007. Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic is considering entering.
As unlikely as it seems Nasa really is looking for help with its latest mission. The US space agency is today launching a competition to find someone to design its latest spacecraft. "The teams that participate in the Lunar Lander Analog Challenge are contributing to Nasa's return to the moon while also accelerating the development of the suborbital spaceflight industry," said Brant Sponberg, Nasa's Centennial Challenges programme manager.
The prize is being run for Nasa by the X-Prize Foundation, the non-profit group that set up the $10m Ansari XPrize. That prize was won in 2004 by Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites in Mojave, California. He designed a re-usable commercial vehicle for ferrying passengers to the edge of space.
The big prize though would be to win the contract to build vehicles for Nasa to use on the moon. For the space agency, funding a prize is much more cost effective than paying for technology development from scratch, said Mr Murphy.
Teams will compete for the prize at the X-Prize Cup Expo in Las Cruces, New Mexico, from October 20 to 22. There are two courses which Mr Murphy labels "difficult" and "very difficult". The winner of the more difficult challenge will take home $1.25m and there are four runner up prizes. If it is not won in October the challenge will roll over until 2007. Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic is considering entering.
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