Next year, a remote-controlled race car will land on the Moon for the first race on the surface of the Moon – and they will be driven by high school students.
Entertainment and education company Moon Mark sponsors the competition, in which teams of students compete to design and lead one of the two competitors.
The winning teams will then work with McLaren P1 designer Frank Stephenson to create a vehicle that will race in the Moon’s low-gravity environment.
In October 2021, they are launched onto the Moon with the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and descend to the surface within the first privately developed lunar board.
The winning teams will then work with McLaren P1 designer Frank Stephenson to create a vehicle that will race in the Moon’s low-gravity environment.
After eight weeks of qualifying high school students from all over the world, six teams of five will compete for the last two places in the Moon competition.
These challenges included e-gaming, drone racing, and space entrepreneurship competition until the last two teams were confirmed.
Their adventures are captured, created and distributed globally by Moon Mark so people can track their progress until the October launch.
The two riders will deploy via Houston’s Nova-C lander using Houston-based Intuitive Machines after the SpaceX Falcon 9 launches at the end of 2021.
The final plan has not yet been confirmed as there will be a collaboration between Moon Mark, Frank Stephenson and the winning teams of high school students
This load on the surface of the Moon – each car weighs 5.5 pounds and the landing machine will weigh an additional 6.6 pounds – totals 17.6 pounds.
Although the cost of the launch has not been revealed – other companies are giving $ 544,000 / pound to send items to the moon – that’s almost $ 10 million.
The Nova-C lander is the first lunar landing aircraft to be developed entirely by a private company and is expected to come into contact at Oceanus Procellarum.
The lander will head to the Moon next year to survey the large canyon-sized Schröter Valley, but will install a pair of race cars at once.
The last two teams of students will complete their racing plans in Houston, Texas before loading them on the lander that will transport them to the moon.
Moon Mark works with a number of private space companies, including Lunar Outpost, who have expertise in the development of lunar vehicles.
“We couldn’t be happier to partner with Lunar Outpost, the industry’s leading aircraft mobility,” said Mary Hagy, founder and CEO of Moon Mark.
“Their expertise in the development of lunar orbits ensures that our racing teams have the technical background to complete the mission and leave the scientific legacy after the waves of the checkered flag.”
Lunar Outpost adapts the patented Mobile Autonomous Research Platform (MAPP) created for extraterrestrial scientific missions to the mobility of competition.
Entertainment and education company Moon Mark sponsors the competition, in which teams of students compete to design and lead one of the two competitors.
“Moon Mark’s mission to involve young people in space travel and work to make space usable for the betterment of humanity echoes in us,” said Justin Cyrus, co-founder and CEO of Lunar Outpost.
“We look forward to allowing the racers on the moon and to be part of the journey to bring space into the world.”
On the lunar surface, racers compete remotely with their rovers, navigating rugged terrain, competing among cameras capturing all aspects.
“We don’t expect communications to affect vehicle competition or driveability with significant delays,” said Todd Wallach, CEO of Moon Mark.
‘Through our partnership with Intuitive Machines, real-time visual capabilities, telemetry, and guidance and control will be available.
“Competitors built by Lunar Outpost connect to the Intuitive Machines Lander via WiFi, and the Lander sends and receives telemetry, commands, and controls to and from Earth to lead the competitors.”
The Moon Mark’s final track and layout has not been confirmed by the Moon Mark team, but is planned by Hermann Tilke – who designed all the new Formula 1 tracks around the world.
– He’s planning this moon orbit. They know the lunar surface, it has been scanned so much that it has enough information to improve the orbit, ”explained Frank Stephenson, who has the final say on vehicle design.
If the Nova-C lander successfully touches the Moon, it will be the first private spaceship to do so – and it’s just one of a few successful projects.
So far, only the United States, China and Russia have made a successful soft landing on the surface of the moon – others have tried, including India – but the missions have not been able to land safely or lost.
Assuming the Nova-C lands safely, this will not only be the first race on the lunar surface, but also the first private landing – potentially at the forefront of a new commercial lunar race.
The Moon has returned to global news as China sends a mission to bring rock samples back from the Moon’s surface – due to its return in December, and the United States sent the first woman and the next man to the surface by 2024.
NASA will deliver the first woman and the next man to the moon in 2024 as part of the Artemis mission
Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo and the goddess of the moon in Greek mythology.
NASA has decided to personify the path to the Moon, on which astronauts will return to the surface of the Moon by 2024 – including the first woman and the next man.
Artemis 1, formerly Exploration Mission-1, is the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that allow human discovery of the Moon and Mars.
Artemis 1 will be the first integrated flight test of NASA’s deep space exploration system: the Orion spacecraft, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and ground systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Canaveral, Florida.
Artemis 1 will be a flight that lays the foundation for human space exploration and demonstrates our commitment and ability to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond.
During this flight, the spacecraft launches on the world’s most powerful rocket and flies farther than any human-made spacecraft has ever flown.
In about three weeks, the mission will cover 280,000 miles (450,600 km) from Earth, a thousand miles beyond the Moon.
Artemis 1, formerly Exploration Mission-1, is the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that allow human discovery of the Moon and Mars. This graphic explains the different stages of the mission
The Orion stays in space longer than any astronaut’s ship, without docking at a space station, and returns home faster and hotter than ever.
With its first research mission, NASA will take the next steps in human discovery into deep space, where astronauts will build and test systems near the Moon needed for lunar surface missions and other targets farther from Earth, including Mars.
The crew is on a different track and testing Orion’s critical systems with people on board.
An SLS missile from an initial configuration capable of sending more than 26 metric tons to the Moon, a final configuration capable of sending at least 45 tons.
Together, the ground systems of Orion, SLS, and Kennedy will be able to meet the most problematic crew and cargo missions in deep space.
Finally, NASA is working to create a sustainable human presence on the moon by 2028 as a result of the Artemis mission.
The space agency hopes this plant will discover new scientific discoveries, showcase new technological advances, and lay the groundwork for private enterprise in building the lunar economy.
