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Moon Diggers
Astrobotic Technology, with some help from the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon, has created a robot to compete in the The NASA Regolith Excavation Challenge. The challenge will award $500,00 for the robot that can dump the most simulated moon dirt in 30 minutes.
Led by Dr. William “Red” Whittaker, Astrobotics main focus is still developing a robot to win the $20 million Google Lunar X Prize. I’m sure that adding $500,000 to help win the Lunar X Prize won’t hurt one bit.
See the press release here.
The Regolith Excavation Challenge will take place on October 17-18 of this year.
Click through for a video of the moon digger in action.
NASA Sending Airplaine To Mars
NASA is going to send a UAV or unmanned aerial vehicle called ARES (Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey of Mars) to Mars.
The rocket propelled airplane will have a 6.5 meter wingspan and will be folded into a an aeroshell for the journey to Mars via rocket.
Once in the Mars atmosphere the bottom of the aeroshell will come off and the plane will be ejected and unfold.
The ARES will fly about 1 mile above the surface of Mars gathering data and covering a lot more area than any rovers on the surface can.
Click here to download and make your own paper airplane model of ARES.
Video after the break.
Link via (GoRobotics)