A pair of remote-controlled racing cars will land on the moon next year for the first lunar surface race – and they will be driven by high school students.
Moon Mark, an entertainment and education company, is sponsoring the competition, in which teams of students will compete to design and manage one of the two contestants.
The winning teams will then work with McLaren P1 designer Frank Stevenson to create a vehicle that can compete in a low-gravity environment on the moon.
They will be launched to the moon with the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in October 2021 and will land on the surface as part of the first privately developed lunar launch vehicle.
The winning teams will then work with McLaren P1 designer Frank Stevenson to create a vehicle that can compete in a low-gravity environment on the moon.
After eight weeks of qualifying for high school students from around the world, six teams of five members will compete to become the last two to compete on the moon.
These challenges include electronic games, drone races and an entrepreneurship race to commercialize space until the last two teams are confirmed.
Their adventures will be captured, produced and distributed worldwide by Moon Mark, so that people can track their progress until the start of October.
The two racers will be positioned on the moon via the Nova-C lander from the Houston-based Intuitive Machines, following the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 in late 2021.
The final design has not been confirmed, as it will be a collaboration between Moon Mark, Frank Stephenson and the winning teams of high school students.
This is a heavy load on the lunar surface – each car will weigh 5.5 pounds, and the landing to bring them to the surface will weigh another 6.6 pounds – a total of 17.6 pounds.
Although the cost of the launch has not been disclosed – other companies cite $ 544,000 per kilogram to send objects to the moon – costs nearly $ 10 million.
The Nova-C landing party is “the first lunar landing entirely developed by a private company” and is expected to appear in Oceanus Procellarum.
The landing party is heading to the moon next year to explore the canyon-sized Schroeter Valley, but will deploy a pair of race cars at the same time.
The last two teams of students will complete the racing projects in Houston, Texas, before being loaded on the lander that will transport them to the moon.
Moon Mark works with a number of private space companies, including Lunar Outpost, which have experience in developing lunar rovers.
“We couldn’t be happier to partner with Lunar Outpost, an industry leader in aerospace mobility,” said Mary Hagi, founder and CEO of Moon Mark.
“Their experience in developing lunar rovers ensures that our racing teams have the technical expertise to carry out the mission and leave a scientific legacy after the checkered flags.”
Lunar Outpost will adapt its patented mobile autonomous search platform (MAPP), designed for alien scientific missions, for competitive mobility.
Moon Mark, an entertainment and educational company, is sponsoring the competition, in which teams of students will compete to design and manage one of the two contestants.
“Moon Mark’s mission to attract young people into space and work to use space to improve humanity is something that resonates with us,” said Justin Cyrus, co-founder and CEO of Lunar Outpost.
“We look forward to enabling moon racers and being part of the journey to bring space to the world.”
Once on the lunar surface, riders will race remotely with their rovers, navigating rough terrain, racing around a sphere of cameras capturing every aspect.
“We don’t expect a significant slowdown in communications that affects race or vehicle handling,” said Moon Mark technical director Todd Wallach.
“We will have near-real-time visualizations, telemetry and command and control through our partnership with Intuitive Machines.
“Racers built by Lunar Outpost will connect to Intuitive Machines Lander via WiFi, and Lander will send and receive telemetry, commands and controls to and from Earth to drive racers.”
The final track and layout of the Moon has not been confirmed by the Moon Mark team, but it was designed by Herman Tilke – who designed all the new Formula 1 tracks around the world.
“He designed this lunar chain.” They know the lunar surface, it has been scanned to such an extent that he has enough information to develop this runway, “said Frank Stevenson, who has the final say on vehicle design.
If the Nova-C lander successfully touches the moon, it will be the first private spacecraft to do so – and one of the few projects to succeed.
So far, only the United States, China and Russia have made successful soft landings on the lunar surface – others have tried, including India, but missions have failed to land safely or have been lost.
Assuming the Nova-C lands safely, not only will it be the first race on the surface of the moon, but it will also be the first private landing – a potential head of a new commercial lunar race.
The moon is back in the world news due to sending China on a mission to return rock samples from the lunar surface – which should return in December, and the United States is sending the first woman and the next man to the surface by 2024.
NASA will land the first woman and next man on the moon in 2024 as part of Artemis’ mission
Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo and the goddess of the moon in Greek mythology.
NASA has chosen to represent its path back to the moon, which will see astronauts return to the lunar surface by 2024 – including the first woman and the next man.
Artemis 1, the former Exploration Mission-1, is the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that will enable human exploration to the moon and Mars.
Artemis 1 will be the first integrated flight test of NASA’s deep space exploration system: the Orion spacecraft, the Space Launch System (SLS) and ground systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Artemis 1 will be an unwrapped flight that will provide a basis for deep human exploration and demonstrate our commitment and ability to extend human existence to the moon and beyond.
During this flight, the spacecraft will launch on the most powerful rocket in the world and will fly farther than any human-built spacecraft has ever flown.
It will travel 450,000 km (450,600 km) from Earth, thousands of miles beyond the moon, in about three weeks.
Artemis 1, the former Exploration Mission-1, is the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that will enable human exploration to the moon and Mars. This chart explains the different stages of the mission
Orion will stay in space longer than any astronaut ship, without attaching to a space station and returning home faster and hotter than ever.
With this first research mission, NASA is leading the next steps in human space exploration, where astronauts will build and begin testing systems near the moon needed for lunar surface missions and explorations to other destinations farther from Earth, including Mars.
The will take the crew on a different trajectory and test Orion’s critical systems with people on board.
The SLS rocket will start from an initial configuration capable of sending more than 26 metric tons to the moon, to a final configuration that can send at least 45 metric tons.
Together, Orion, SLS and Kennedy’s ground systems will be able to meet the most challenging needs of the crew and mission in deep space.
Ultimately, NASA seeks to establish a sustainable human presence on the moon by 2028 as a result of the Artemis mission.
The space agency hopes the colony will uncover new scientific discoveries, demonstrate new technological advances and lay the foundations for private companies to build a lunar economy.
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