The commercial spaceflight
company Golden Spike – which aims fly private missions to the moon by 2020 –
has teamed up with the New York-based firm Honeybee Robotics to design robotic rovers for
the planned lunar
expeditions.
"We're very proud to be working with Honeybee, which has
tremendous experience and a record of successful performance in the development
of flight systems for NASA," Golden Spike President
and CEO Alan Stern said in a statement last month.
An artist's illustration of a Golden
Spike Company moon lander on the lunar surface.
Credit: Golden Spike Company |
Golden Spike first announced its goal of launching
two-person commercial flights to the moon in December 2012. To boost
the scientific
output of the expeditions, the company plans to send unmanned rovers
to the moon ahead of the crew to collect samples from a wider area than the
crew will be able to travel from their landing pad. The rovers will then
meet up with the crew's spacecraft once it arrives, according to the mission
plan. [Golden
Spike's Private Moon Mission Plan in Pictures]
"Honeybee brings a unique body
of knowledge and skills to help us augment the capabilities of human
exploration missions with advanced robotics," Clive Neal, a researcher at
the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and chair of Golden Spike's lunar
science advisory board, said in a statement. "Their participation is a key
step forward in helping Golden Spike change the paradigm of human space
exploration, through the development of highly capable lunar exploration system
architecture for customers around the world."
Honeybee Robotics has been designing planetary
sampling devices for clients including NASA and the US Department of
Defense for more than 25 years, and has contributed to the last three of
NASA's Mars Landers: The company designed the rock abrasion tool for NASA's
Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, as well as the icy soil
acquisition device (or "Phoenix Scoop") for the U.S. space agency's
Phoenix Mars Lander, and the sample manipulation system and dust removal tool
for the Curiosity rover.
Golden Spike officials initially priced the missions at
$1.5 billion per person, but has since estimated that the cost could drop down
to about $750 million with the help of media coverage and sales of
merchandising rights of the missions, Stern told reporters last year at the
29th National Space Symposium in Colorado Spring, Colo. Potential moon flyers
include leaders of nations, large corporations, and independently funded
individuals.
The companies plan to complete preliminary tests of
their rover design by mid-2014.
Source – Space.com
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