Part-Time Scientists

Part-Time Scientists is the name of a German team of aerospace engineers, participating in the Google Lunar X-Prize. The aim of the company founded in June 2009, the team is to perform an unmanned moon landing by the end of 2015, in which a rover will explore the lunar surface. The cost of the mission is estimated at 30 million euros, the start of the vehicle is to be carried out by a Russian carrier rocket and is scheduled for early 2014. After the competition team C- Base Open Moon in July 2011 withdrew his application, the Part-Time Scientists are the last German of the remaining 25 teams.

  • 2.1 history
  • 2.2 partner

Planned mission

History and Mission Target

The Lander with Rover is transported by a carrier rocket from Earth to Low Earth Orbit, take course towards the moon, settle into a lunar orbit and land. The landing area should be near the landing site of Apollo 17. The aim of the mission is to land safely in the Google Lunar X-Prize in 2015 as first a probe on the moon with a rover to cover at least 500 m on the lunar surface and to transfer images and video to Earth.

Launcher

As a launcher to serve a Russian / Ukrainian Dnepr.

A lander prototype, named Jules Verne R0 - named after the French writer and science fiction pioneer Jules Verne - was introduced in December 2010.

Rover

Prototypes

It been four rover prototypes have been developed and successfully built:

  • Asimov Jr. R1 - presented at the Chaos Communication Congress 26C3 in Berlin in December 2009
  • Asimov Jr. R2 - presented at the International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition Berlin 2010
  • Asimov Jr. R0 - presented at the Chaos Communication Congress 27C3 in Berlin end of December 2010
  • Asimov Jr. R3 - presented at the Chaos Communication Congress 28C3 in Berlin end of December 2011

Naming

The rovers are named after the famous Russian- American biochemist and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Prototypes, which are not yet suitable space have numbered in ascending order of the suffix " Jr.", in addition, the prototype after revision. In the prototype R0 is, however, for illustrative purposes a mock-up.

Part-Time Scientists and Part-Time- Scientists GmbH

History

The Part-Time Scientists were founded in 2009, when ten teams had registered for the 2007 launched the Google Lunar X-Prize. Then the Part-Time- Scientists GmbH was founded later.

Partner

According to the Part-Time Scientists are among its partners:

  • Technical University of Hamburg -Harburg
  • German Centre for Aerospace
  • Technical University of Berlin
  • Texas Instruments
  • Nvidia

Others

  • On 28 March 2012, the Part-Time Scientists were guests at Steffen Hallaschka in Stern TV on RTL.
Dnepr-1 Lander (spacecraft) France Types of business entity
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