Astrobotic Technology, with some help from the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon, has created a robot to compete in the The NASA Regolith Excavation Challenge. The challenge will award $500,00 for the robot that can dump the most simulated moon dirt in 30 minutes.

Led by Dr. William “Red” Whittaker, Astrobotics main focus is still developing a robot to win the $20 million Google Lunar X Prize. I’m sure that adding $500,000 to help win the Lunar X Prize won’t hurt one bit.

See the press release here.

The Regolith Excavation Challenge will take place on October 17-18 of this year.

Click through for a video of the moon digger in action.

Link via (Space Ref )



