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ABSTRACT

 

The sun and the Moon are the two well defined celestial bodies visible to the naked eye. Both have been worshiped by many cultures. However, only the Moon can be realistically landed upon. To date, there have been eighteen spacecraft landings on the Moon. The Soviet Union was the first to reach the surface of the Moon by impacting its unmanned Luna 2 spacecraft against the Moon. The United States accomplished the first manned landing to the Moon on July 20^th, 1969. Yet, none of these missions have been accomplished by private agencies.

 

Google and the X PRIZE Foundation have partnered into what is known as: The Google Lunar X PRIZE. The purpose of this competition is to encourage private entities such as universities, companies, and even groups of individuals to land a privately funded craft on the lunar surface and achieve some defined goals. After landing on the lunar surface, the space craft  should:

 

· roam for 500 meters.

· transmit a Mooncast back to Earth.

 

A Mooncast consists of transmitting the following back to Earth:

 

· high resolution 360 degree panoramic photographs

· self portraits of the rover

· near-real time High Definition (HD) video

· some predefined cached set of data back to Earth

 

A bonus also exists for roving distances longer than 5000 meters, imaging manmade artifacts on the moon, discovering water ice, and/or surviving a lunar night. We propose a strategic solution for winning the Grand Google Lunar X Prize, as well as accomplishing the bonuses.

The rocket launch, orbital mechanics, soft landing, link budget, hardware, rover, and cost for all these are discussed. The main team strategy is to use the lunar landing station to relay data from the rover to the Earth. Using the lunar landing station alleviates the rover from the extra weight of carrying high gain antennas, and solar cells needed to transmit HD video signals directly to Earth. Our total cost for accomplishing this mission is $8,775,278.

Proposal to Claim the Google Lunar X-PRIZE

Two cups and a string