Selenokhod GLXP rover ready by summer

Team activity - The implementation of such a large-scale project is impossible without cooperation of various specialists. In team discussions we find powerful incentive to progress it’s extremely exciting and useful for professional development [Selenokhod].

The Team Selenokhod GLXP lunar rover prototype will be finished by summer, developers said on Thursday. Selenokhod is the only Russian entrant among the 26 teams competing for the Google Lunar X Prize.

Selenokhod will move on flats instead of wheels, a design developed for the 4.5-kg Prop-M rovers that traveled on-board the identical Mars 2 and Mars 3 missions. After Mars 2 crashed on the martian surface, Mars 3 achieved the first soft landing there, December 2, 1971. But, for reasons still unknown, all contact was lost with Mars 3 after only 14.5 seconds.

RIA Novosti has posted a video showing
the Selenokhod lunar rover in action.

Though neither Prop-M rover was successfully deployed on Mars, the Russians are apparently working hard to live up to an inherited legacy of having landed and operated the only robotic rovers on the Moon, in 1970 and 1973.

The team is planning to deliver its 5-kg Selenokhod to the moon on-board Luna-Glob, though that mission was recently delayed until sometime after 2015, past the present X-Prize deadline, and the team reports that contest organizers have not yet indicated whether using a government-funded platform is acceptable.

Proposed GLXP rule changes inspire concern

Updated September 15, 2010 1825 UT

Google Lunar X-Prize (GLXP) team SELENOKHOD in Russia demonstrates a test-bed prototype of the lunar rover the group hopes will win a minimum $20 million purse. However, Russian resources now committed to a planned 2013 joint Russian & Indian lunar mission has put a strain on their timetable [Selenokhod].

Peter J. Brown
Asia Times Online

Government space agencies are taking a closer look at the Google Lunar X Prize (GLXP) contest, an international competition to safely land a rover on the moon. Several GLXP teams include space researchers and engineers in Asia on their rosters, and NASA is rolling out a program that might provide US GLXP teams with a $30 million market for their mission data. Other countries may not sit still for long in light of this development.

That is the good news. The not so good news is that as the result of a proposed GLXP rule change, the $20 million GLXP grand prize could be reduced by $5 million if a government-backed lunar mission successfully lands and deploys a rover in advance of any of the 21 GLXP teams accomplishing the same feat. All GLXP teams must be 90% privately funded.

According to the original set of GLXP rules, the grand prize would be awarded to the team that first landed a rover on the Moon and subsequently able to travel at least 500 meters while simultaneously transmitting data and a live TV signal back to Earth. The deadline has been December 31, 2012. If that objective was not achieved, however, a GLXP team could still win a reduced grand prize of $15 million if it fulfilled all requirements by December 2014.

Now, under the proposed so-called GLXP "Master Team Agreement" (MTA), revised rules, including the $5 million cut described above, are taking shape. All remaining prizes, including a $5 million second prize and several bonus prizes, would be unaffected.

Under proposed changes to contest rules, the 2012 deadline is pushed ahead three years to December 31, 2015. However, even that deadline might be extended by the California-based X Prize Foundation (XPF).

Several countries, including the European Space Agency (ESA), are planning to conduct lunar landings over the coming decade. The joint Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)-Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) Chandrayaan-2 orbiter and rover / Luna-Resource lunar lander scheduled for 2013, appears first in line.

"Almost every space agency is talking about missions to the lunar surface these days. Putting fixed calendar dates on them is very difficult, though," said William Pomerantz, senior director of space prizes at the XPF.

"We are excited about and are following developments on other fronts, including China's Chang'e 3, Japan's SELENE-2, The Indo-Russian Luna-Resource /Chandrayaan-2, ESA's MoonNEXT, a variety of potential NASA robotic missions and possibly the UK's MoonLite, along with eventual nodes of the proposed International Lunar Network (ILN)."

"At this point, it's difficult to say with certainty which will be which," said Pomerantz

Read the full article, HERE.

Russia's Selenokhod chases GXP

Team Selenokhod, a Russian group of engineers and managers, announced its official entry into the Google Lunar X Prize competition Monday. The $30 million competition challenges space professionals and engineers from across the globe to build and launch a privately funded spacecraft to the moon which is capable of completing a series of exploration and transmission tasks as outlined in the competition's official rules. Team Selenokhod, headquartered in Moscow, Russia with ten group members, is among 20 teams from 44 countries that are competing for their share of the $30 million prize.

"The contribution progress of (the) private sector in cosmonautics is (a) worldwide trend nowadays. The previous international contest, (the) Ansari X Prize, showed that non-government companies have (opportunities) to create space technologies needed to achieve ambitious goals. Team Selenokhod wants Russian companies to evaluate the experience of their foreign colleagues, to understand (the) big opportunities of private space exploration and join us in our challenging project", said Nikolay Dzis-Voynarovskiy, Selenokhod Team Leader.

Story from Aero-News, HERE.