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Solar-Powered Moon Rover To Explore Apollo Landing
Mike writes "Carnegie Mellon roboticist Dr. William Whittaker has teamed up with Astrobiotic Technology to develop a solar powered moon rover that will explore the Apollo landing site in 2011. The photovoltaic clad robot features two electric motors in the hub of each wheel, and a half cone of solar generators up top that will power the wheels, run computers, and beam stereo HD video back to earth. The project has been entered in the $25 million Google Lunar X Prize competition."
While they're at it, it would be awesome to deploy a few more seismometers...
Moonquakes are pretty damn cool from a seismological perspective. Beyond that, some of the ones recorded by Apollo-installed seismometers were >Mw 5. Big enough to be damaging.
The moon isn't tectonically active, of course, but it is seismically active, and the data recorded in the 70's indicates that the moon's lithosphere is a very different beast compared to earth's. At any rate, it would produce some extremely neat data!
Armstrong's first boot prints must surely have been destroyed when the ascent module fired its main engine. However, there are probably other footprints further from the LM site that should be preserved.
Armstrong's first boot prints were most likely destroyed the minute Buzz Aldrin hopped off the ladder after him. It's the last bootprints that would have been obliterated by the ascent module.