Google Moon X-Prize

Contest: The group that first sends a robot to the moon and it goes over 500 m. will win 20 mill. dollars, thats all. Official Agencys,like NASA or ESA, dont participate.

Why all this? Motivate the industry and the enterprises to develope new technology. They try to make a new revolution in the way of researching and creating new technologies, making more accesible and atractive to the companys the investisment on space techonlogy. The group who wins will pay more than 20 mill. for achieving the goal, but in the researching and developing proccess will generate more invetions and new technics, that will provide also a lot of patents and money. Its a kind of WEb. 2.0 revolution, where everybody has something to say. There is a lot to say about the benefits of having our presence on the moon. That will be a topic for future posts.

Lets check that on the web:

http://www.googlelunarxprize.com/

spanish link:

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/intl/esp

Why do I comment that today? Maybe I will participate with my actual University, in Würzburg in Germany. We have made 4 groups: Orbit calculation and System Design, Landing,Robot, Management. Maybe the most complicated part, in order to find partner companys or any kind of external investments.

The leader is Prof.Schilling, who has participated in many spatial missions for the ESA, like the Huygens probe. If he is participating, and creating that group, he maybe is sure about his skills and possibilities. I will provide more information about our development in the future. At the moment we have made only the groups.

Voyager

In the year 1977, the space probe Voyager I and II were sent to the "space". Since then, both probes are travelling through the solar system, being almost in the limits right now. What is interesting is the fact that each Voyager has inside an Album, called "Sound of Earth". The album is made of Gold and has different kinds of songs and human sounds, that should represent the whole humanity. It is amazing that a NASA proyect, with mainly scientifical purpouses, also takes into account that kind of issues, about a possible Alien's Rendevouz. Carl Sagan was involved in the creation of that album. Sincerely, this topic about creating such an album with all the relevant information of the humanity is one of the most fascinating tasks that it has been ever done.

More info here:

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

Another fascinating fact is that Voyager I is the most distant artifact, created by the humanity. They are still transmitting information, after 30 years... awesome. The picture shows the images that the Voyager I captured nearby Jupiter in the 80's (click on the image, is an animated GIF). Now Voyager I is almost out of the solar system, without no influence of the solar radiaton. But it carries an own battery, with radioactiv energy and will run out in 2020. After that, goodbye Voyager I! no more contact with it.

I strongly recommend you to read all the information related to Voyager probes in the Wikipedia. I took the information from there and does not make sense to copy everything here.

And please, do not forget to comment everything related to the Voyagers or the "Sound of Earth" album. I am really impressed about that mission.

The beginning...

First of all, i took the decision of writing here in English. I know that my style and my English in general is pretty bad, but in somehow i will improve it in that way.

New blog, new hopes ... The aim of this blog is to inform my friends about special matters, mainly about the Spatial Topics. Maybe at the end i use the blog with a different porpouse, but first, lets see if I still write something here after one month. I hope that I continue writing then.

Another issue, i will try not to speak about me, ill try to inform about relevant and interesting topics!

That is all. Enjoy the publication!