The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge will be held October 24-25 at the Las Cruces International Airport in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Two teams are expected to fly during the competition: Armadillo Aerospace and TrueZer0. Although the competition is not open to the public, the event will be webcast.
Credit: X PRIZE
Nine teams have registered for the competition: five veteran teams from last year and four brand new teams.
The Challenge is designed to accelerate commercial technological developments supporting the birth of a new generation of Lunar Landers capable of ferrying payloads or humans back and forth between lunar orbit and the lunar surface. Such a vehicle would have direct application to NASA's space exploration goals as well as the personal spaceflight industry, including the Google Lunar X PRIZE competitors. Additionally, the challenge will help industry develop the operational capacity to launch quick turnaround vertical take-off, vertical landing vehicles, which will be of significant use to many facets of the commercial launch procurement market.
The Competition is divided into two levels. Level 1 requires a rocket to take off from a designated launch area, rocket up to 150 feet (50 meters) altitude, then hover for 90 seconds while landing precisely on a landing pad 50 meters away. The flight must then be repeated in reverse -- and both flights, along with all of the necessary preparation for each, must take place within a two and a half hour period.
The more difficult course, Level 2, requires the rocket to hover for twice as long before landing precisely on a simulated lunar surface, packed with craters and boulders to mimic actual lunar terrain. The hover times are calculated so that the Level 2 mission closely simulates the power needed to perform a real lunar mission.
In the [URL=http://space.xprize.org/press-release/armadillo-aerospace-nearly-wins-northrop-grumman-lunar-lander-challenge]2007 competition[/URL], held as part of the X PRIZE Cup, there were nine competitors total. However, despite the best efforts of all of the teams, only one of them, Armadillo Aerospace, was ready to fly. They missed winning Level 1 by 7 seconds.