SpaeCor News

While NASA is commemorating 40 years of wasted time, private space companies bound for the moon are preparing for the next major breakthrough.  The private sector, fed up with the funding that space exploration has received, have pooled resources for the Google Lunar Xprize.  As a follow up to my first Article on the Lunar X Prize Contest , I will be taking a look at two out of the nineteen teams competing for the $20 million USD. Romanian based team ARCA and US based team Astrobotic.

ARCA (Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association) is one of the few teams that has the ability to launch their own robotics into space.  Every other competitor is relying on outside launch capability mostly SpaceX to boost their payloads to the moon. ARCA plans to launch their balloon like moon rover from a solar powered balloon that will be 15km above the earths surface. This is expected to cut their launch costs, but create headaches for orbital calculations on getting to the moon.


Astrobotic plans to begin their exploration of the moon and claim the Lunar X prize as soon as 2011. They will begin their exploration of the moon by landing at the Apollo 11 site during the contest thus claiming an extra $5 million in prize dollars. Future missions Astrobotic plans to explore the poles and areas with persistent sunlight.

Astrobotic is not new to building robots for extreme environments.  They’ve sent rovers to earths poles the most inhospitable deserts, and abandoned mine shafts. Now they’ve decided to expand their business to the moon. Astrobotics’s business plan, for the moon, consists of scouting the surface of the moon for high interest areas for commercialization.  Exploration of polar regions for liquid ice and areas with persistent sunlight will be among the first high interest areas.  With information about these sites future colonization efforts will be able to make much more detailed lunar base blueprints.

ARCA is the first team that will attempt to take the Google’s Lunar X prize.  They plan to launch as soon as 2010. Personally I would like to see ARCA succeed in their plan, but their lack of a long term business plan makes me less inclined to cheer for them. ARCA definitly seem like the underdogs in the media’s light, but the fact that they run their own time schedule and not that of SpaceX they have a much higher chance of winning the XPrize. Although the media neglects ARCA support is high for them among online forums. One thing is for sure starting 2010 there will be no shortage of excitment about the moon.