On October 24th the Armadillo
Aerospace team, led by famous computer game
programmer John
Carmack, won first place in the Level I competition
of the Northrop
Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge event held
in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The purse, funded by
the NASA
Centennial Challenges program, was $350,000.
Their vertical takeoff and vertical landing (VTVL)
vehicle called Mod
flew vertically up to 50 meters, hovered and then
traversed sideways 50 meters before descending
onto a pad, remaining above ground for a total
time of more than the required 90 seconds. They
later repeated the feat in a return to the inital
starting pad. The total time for the setup and
fueling of the vehicle and the two flights was
less than the maximum of two and a half hours,
although due to a FAA flight window restriction,
they had to split the flights between morning
and afternoon sessions.
The video below provides highlights from the
first day of the event, which also included a
brief flight by the vehicle from the three person
TrueZer0
team. They had designed and built their lander
within just a 10 month period. Unfortunately,
they did not have time to test the vehicle thoroughly
and so it was not a big surprise when the vehicle
failed during the flight. However, they succeeded
in becoming just the second team besides Armadillo
to fly a vehicle since the NG-LLC competition
began in 2006.
Lots more photos and videos from the event and
the preparations leading up to it can be found
in this Armadillo
Aerospace gallery. The Armadillo vehicle gets
its name from a modular design that allows for
multiple units to be fitted together to build
larger, more capable vehicles. During the NG-LLC
event they announced
that they would work with the Rocket
Racing League to develop space tourism vehicles
based on the Mod vehicle design. Unmanned test
flights will begin next year.
Check for the latest in leading edge rocket projects
on the Space
Transport News blog.
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