Armadillo was the first team to qualify for the prize (Image: W. Pomerantz/X Prize Foundation)

Two rocket teams will compete in back-to-back tests this week for what remains of the $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge prize for pilot-less vehicles that could take off and land vertically on the moon. They have until Saturday to prevent the top prize of $1 million going to Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwall, Texas.

Armadillo scooped $350,000 – the top prize for the first level of the competition – last October for being the first team to launch a rocket vertically to 50 metres and hover for 90 seconds before landing, and repeating the process within hours. In September, the company became the first to complete the second level of the challenge by keeping a rocket airborne for 180 seconds before landing on terrain that simulates a cratered, boulder-strewn lunar surface.

Doing that under Earth’s gravity and air resistance is calculated to require the same power as would be needed to successfully touch down on the lunar surface, where gravity is six times weaker, and air absent. If no one else can do that by 31 October then Armadillo will swell its winnings by claiming the challenge’s top $1 million prize as well.


Rocket race

Announced in 2006, the prize has attracted a dozen registered teams, but until last year none had completed any part of the challenge.

On 7 October Masten Space Systems, based in Mojave, California, became the only other team to pass the challenge’s first level (see a video of the team’s rocket doing so), qualifying for the $150,000 prize for taking second place in that level. Masten will make attempts on the second level on Wednesday and Thursday from a site in the Mojave desert.

Another team, Unreasonable Rocket, will attempt both levels of the challenge on Friday and Saturday.

A third team, California-based BonNovA, was slated to do the same today and tomorrow, but yesterday announced via Twitter that they had withdrawn from competition.

Hits the spot

Should either of Armadillo’s competitors pass the second level of the challenge, the top prize will be awarded to the team that lands its craft most accurately.

The Masten team think this tie-breaking rule gives them a good shot at first prize, says spokesperson Douglas Graham. While Armadillo’s vehicle landed on average 90 centimetres from its target in the second-level tests, Masten’s landing accuracy in the first level averaged about 15 centimetres.

Public demonstration

Over the course of the competition, teams have invested $20 million and 100,000 person-hours in pursuit of the prize purse, says William Pomerantz, head of space prizes at the X Prize Foundation, based in Playa Vista, California, which is managing the contest for NASA.

“Generally speaking you’ll find that most teams are willing to spend on average about two and a half times the prize value trying to win the prize,” says Pomerantz.

“The reason they do that is they see the prize not as the end of their activities but really just the start. [The prize is a] way to very quickly recoup a lot of their initial capital expenses and in a very public way demonstrate their capabilities in a way that will be attractive to future customers.”

The competition organisers concede that future lunar landers will necessarily be quite different from those in the contest, but say many of the underlying technologies developed will apply on the moon. Rockets able to land vertically may also be of use for taking humans and scientific payloads to the edge of space, Pomerantz says.

If no other team completes the second level of the challenge successfully, the second prize of $500,000 will be carried over to next year for a last round of competition. If it then remains unclaimed, it will be returned to NASA.