Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Solar-Powered Moon Rover To Explore Apollo Landing

Posted by samzenpus on from the check-out-the-whole-stage dept.

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."

1 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Moonquakes by jofer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!