Posted on 12/04/2016 12:54:57 AM PST by moose07
A proposed private space mission is planning to visit Apollo 17's landing site on the Moon.
A German team wants to land a pair of rovers on the lunar surface to inspect the buggy left behind in 1972 on the last crewed mission to the Moon.
The group, called PT Scientists, is one of 16 teams vying for the $30m Google Lunar X-Prize.
It has signed a deal with launch broker Spaceflight Inc. to secure a ride on a commercial launcher.
The XPrize will award the first privately funded teams to land a robot on the Moon that travels more than 500 metres (1,640 ft) and transmits back high-definition images and video.
Spaceflight Inc will place the mission with a commercial launcher, but it is not yet known which one.
The PT Scientists team has been working with German car manufacturer Audi on the solar-powered rovers, which will be capable of sending back high-definition video.
The rovers are expected to touch down 3-5km from the Apollo 17 landing site in the Moon's Taurus-Littrow valley. It will then drive to within 200m of the lunar rover and inspect it remotely.
Nasa guidelines stipulate that missions should land at least 2km away from US space agency heritage sites and not approach closer than 200m in order to avoid the risk of damage to these historic locations.
The rover's cameras should be able to assess the condition of the Apollo buggy and how it has fared in the Moon's harsh environment - including damage from micro-meteorites.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
The Moon is a rough neighborhood. When they roll up to that Apollo buggy they may find it up on blocks and stripped.
Hopefully not, but it would be funny.
I bought his book to see what he found. It was a pretty long technical report, backed by his experience in the field of geography. I slogged through the book but found nothing that would warrant going back to the Moon ever again!
The risks and the expense of Moon exploration and development couldn't be justified. I don't see what has changed since the Apollo days.
Maybe they should put a really big cell tower up there.
Imagine the shock if they find the lunar rover stripped and up on blocks with no tires.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Mike is ready to lob rocks if Trump isn’t inaugurated.
For just the reason to go there, no, but the advances in technology would not have had the reason to happen without it. It appears your interest path is more centered around the earth sciences rather than engineering as a whole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies
Will it still have the 8-Track player?
Harrison Schmitt.
You can use the same justifications to Queen Isablea to not finance C. Columbus on his quest to find a short route to India.
A renown geologist who walked on the moon writes a book about the geology of the moon and with all the publicly known anomalies about lunar geology there is nothing worth going back to study?
However, on a different track, had we used all the money we spent on Apollo and other worthless space programs and just hunkered down - why with all that money spent on feeding and sheltering (along with various and sundry free stuff) the hungry and homeless, Johnson’s War on Poverty would have achieved total victory! Hip Hip Horay! Go Linden Go!!
Let the Chinese and others waste their time going to the moon and on other space ventures, who cares how many military bases they set up on the moon and at Lagrange points? We are feeding the hungry and homeless with all the free goodies they could possible ever want (made in China of course). America, the land without hope and without dreams ...
If I were Trump I would offer these guys a few million bucks to put a Trump 2020 bumper sticker on the Moon Buggy and a Webcam that transmits 24/7 just to watch the Liberals heads explode!
Should have gotten the TrueCoat. You don’t get that TrueCoat, you get problems with micrometeorites, cost you a heck of a lot more than $500.00.
IIRC, it has been strongly speculated that the American flags left by Apollo 11 and the other missions are no longer red white and blue, but have become stark white. Bleached of all color by the harsh solar wind and extreme temperature variations over the better part of fifty years.
I can live with the thought of the lunar flags being bleached white by time and the elements but if some Soros funded urban yute has burned them, I’ll be pissed!
So how much did you get for them on Ebay ?:D
:)
Pointless going ,then.
Good idea. But Coverage would still be bad for twelve hours a day.
Can you imagine the complaining....
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