India, Russia squeeze Google Moon racers
By Peter J Brown
Government space agencies are taking a closer look at the Google Lunar X Prize (GLXP) competition, an international competition to safely land a rover on the moon. Several GLXP teams include space researchers and engineers in Asia on their rosters. And the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is rolling out a program that might provide US GLXP teams with a total of over US$30 million. Other countries may not sit still for long in light of this development.
That is the good news. The not so good news is that as the result of a proposed GLXP rule change, the $20 million GLXP grand prize could be reduced by $5 million if a government-backed lunar mission successfully lands and deploys a rover in advance of any of the 21 GLXP teams accomplishing the same feat. All GLXP
teams must be 90% privately funded.
According to the original set of GLXP rules, the grand prize would be awarded to the GLXP team that first landed a rover on the Moon and which was able to travel at least 500 meters while simultaneously transmitting data and video - a live high-definition TV signal - back to Earth. The deadline was December 31, 2012. If that objective was not achieved, a GLXP team could still win a reduced grand prize of $15 million if it fulfilled all requirements by December 2014.
Now, under the proposed so-called GLXP "Master Team Agreement" (MTA), revised rules, including the $5 million cut described above, are taking shape. All remaining prizes, including a $5 million second prize and several bonus prizes, will be unaffected. The 2012 deadline is gone, with the competition now ending on December 31, 2015. However, this deadline may be extended by the California-based X Prize Foundation (XPF).
It is no secret that several countries as well as the European Space Agency (ESA) are planning to conduct lunar landings over the coming decade. The joint Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)-Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) Chandrayaan-2 lunar mission involving the deployment of a lunar rover on the Moon in 2012 appears to be the first in line.
"Almost every space agency is talking about missions to the lunar surface these days. Putting fixed calendar dates on them is very difficult, though," said William Pomerantz, senior director of space prizes at the XPF. "We are excited about and are following along with the developments on several: [Besides Chandrayaan -2] China's Chang'e 3, Japan's Selene 2, Russia's Luna-Glob, the ESA's MoonNEXT, a variety of potential NASA robotic missions, and possibly the UK's MoonLite, along with various nodes of the proposed International Lunar Network."
Some of these missions may never come to fruition, and others will likely be combined with one another or with other missions yet to be discussed.
"At this point, it's difficult to say with certainty which will be which," said Pomerantz
The sequence in motion today calls for the Chandrayaan-2 mission to be followed quickly by China's Chang'e 3 lunar rover mission and then Japan's Selene-2 mission - not to be confused with Team Selene, currently China's only GLXP team.
"Chang'e 3 is scheduled for launch in 2013. It is a bigger problem than Selene 2, which will be launched in 2015," said Nikolay Dzis-Voynarovskiy, chief executive officer (CEO) of Moscow-based Team Selenokhod, the only Russian GLXP team. "Our team's original intention was to purchase the same lunar lander from Lavochkin Association which the Indian-Russian lunar mission will use."
While those plans have now changed, Dzis-Voynarovskiy is a bit nervous about how Chandrayaan-2 might impact his team in other ways.
"If the Chandrayan-2 mission is successful then our project will become less attractive to investors and sponsors because of smaller public interest with comparable price. The only way to maintain its attractiveness for investors is to drastically reduce mission costs by using absolutely new technologies, management techniques and so on. This is the biggest challenge," said Dzis-Voynarovskiy.
Alabama-based Team FREDNET, the Open Space Society, ranks as one of the more multinational teams in the competition. The non-profit corporation includes several participants from India and Sri Lanka, according to CEO Fred Bourgeois.
"Anything that sparks public interest in returning to the Moon is a good thing," said Bourgeois.
While he finds some of the proposed GLXP rule changes to be acceptable, he has deemed the $5 million cut as "most definitely unacceptable". "In particular, changing the amount of the prize as a consequence of a government reaching the Moon first is completely unacceptable. The point of the GLXP is to incentivize private investment in lunar and space development," said Bourgeois.
"Asking teams to compete with governments with their virtually limitless ability to print and spend money is clearly not a fair competition, and absolutely dis-incentivizes private innovation and competition."
Bourgeois has his supporters, including those who belong to other teams. Randa Milliron, CEO of Team Synergy Moon, for example, is perhaps even more agitated by this development.
She also serves as CEO of California-based Interorbital Systems and Trans Lunar Research. Team Synergy Moon, which is headquartered at the Mojave Spaceport includes Sayandeep Khan, a native of West Bengal - he is now attending Jacobs University in Bremen - who is developing scientific applications for Team Synergy Moon's lunar rover. Milliron had just returned from delivering a speech at the annual Small Satellite Conference in Utah.
"We intend to immediately protest the wording of the document. Many of us were completely unaware of it. The rationale for such a scheme is flawed - it is in complete contradiction to the original commercial nature of the prize," said Milliron. "Reducing the prize by $5 million because of a 'win' by a single or multi-state lunar venture - which would obviously have enjoyed comparatively unlimited government funding - is a slap in the collective face of all teams engaged in what was supposed to be a private-sector venture. I can only hope it was something accidentally left in a draft document."
Pomerantz emphasizes that above all else, GLXP rules are written in such a way that they provide an extra incentive to teams to conduct their missions soon by having a $5 million change in the grand prize value at some point during the competition.
"Rather than pegging that change to an arbitrary date on a calendar, we have tied it to the milestone of a government-funded mission exploring the surface," said Pomerantz. "Hopefully, this will be fun for the public following the prize, but the real reason we did this is that timelines of government-funded missions are likely to be at least somewhat impacted by the same global economic trends that will affect our teams."
While Bourgeois seems passionate, he is also reasonable, and does not seek to cast the competition in a negative light. In other words, he will accept the rule change if four specific conditions are met. Firstly, not only must the qualifying government lunar mission complete all the strict GLXP requirements, but its total expenditure also must not exceed the total value of the GLXP's "prize purse" of $30 million.
Bourgeois also wants the qualifying government's lunar mission to "specifically state that the intent of said qualifying government mission is to complete all requirements of the GLXP competition before any GLXP registered team". He wants all relevant media and media rights to be properly assigned and distributed, and, the same logo constraints applied that are imposed on the registered teams.
The biggest challenge facing Team FREDNET is funding, yet the team continues to make progress. It already has operational so-called "PicoRovers" in Spain and the US, and has partnered with the Air and Space Education Consortium of Broward College in Florida "to develop models and electronics systems for use in multiple mission stages". Work has commenced on mission conceptual designs as well as a lunar lander, and several successful high-altitude balloon tests of various mission components - as a prelude to space-qualification have taken place in Spain
"Team FREDNET is actively working to develop formal partnerships with several major universities, and pursuing launch opportunities with multiple providers," said Bourgeois.
The recent rule changes that concern Markus Bindhammer, leader of Team Selene based in Shanghai, involve insurance and mobility.
"Some GLXP rule changes are not acceptable for us. For
example, we are indirectly responsible for one significant rule change involving mobility. In April 2009, we announced our so-called spiral lunar lander/rover concept. At the time, this concept was allowed under the 2008 GLXP rules," said Bindhammer. "A short time later, after the 2009 GLXP team summit, the GLXP mobility rules were revised so that, in effect it ruled out our spiral rover/lander concept."
Bindhammer has forged a strong relationship with the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and worked closely with the School of Aeronautics at Beihang University.
Effective and even aggressive partnering will play an important role in the outcome of this competition. Andrew Barton, who leads the Netherlands-based Team White Label Space, for example, has devoted considerable time and energy to team-building. He is not really concerned by the impact of government missions. Like Milliron, Barton was unaware of the proposed $5 million cut until Asia Times Online brought it to his attention.
"The GLXP is not competing directly with government programs, nor should it. GLXP is a parallel effort, and it will actually benefit government space programs. Equally the efforts of governments can benefit the efforts of GLXP teams who are able to access the technologies," said Barton.
The pattern to date strongly suggests that any government moon-landing missions in the time frame of GLXP will involve development efforts for some of the more difficult technologies and systems.
"Normally, when government agencies finance space technology, the development work is done by industry, and industry also retains the intellectual property," said Barton. "Thus, in principle, GLXP teams should be able to partner with the companies involved in a government mission and this could reduce the costs and risks for investors and sponsors of a GLXP mission."
In the case of the joint Chandryaan-2 mission, attention must be paid to the fact that the Russians will provide the lander for the mission.
"They will not need to develop many new technologies since they already executed a number of successful moon landings during the 1960s and 1970s using what appears to be the same lander design. Thus, the biggest potential impact on GLXP will be the new moon rover technologies to be developed in India," said Barton.
He sees signs that the pace of lunar exploration is picking up considerably on a global basis.
"ESA has its own lunar lander project currently in Phase B and due for launch late in this decade. Also, NASA is trying to get funding for a lunar lander under the recently announced 'xScout' missions," said Barton. "China has not released such detailed plans, although it has expressed a long-term interest in human lunar landings which would probably require a program of robotic precursors."
Team White Label Space formed a partnership two years ago with Tohoku University's Department of Aerospace Engineering. Headed by professor Yoshida Kazuya it is one of world's leading robotic research organizations. Among other things, not only has Japan recently approved year-round launches at two facilities where prior longstanding restrictions prevented this from happening, but the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) opened the door to several recent "piggyback" launch opportunities for micro-satellites in 2009.
"Such increased opportunities to access space will expand the number of private, and even academic players. Access to the Moon is somewhat different and more difficult, but it will be great if we can get piggyback flight opportunities to the Moon," said Yoshida.
So far, Yoshida has launched seven piggyback payloads, including six non-government satellites created by universities and private companies, all of which were launched in 2009. There was also a university payload known as Unitec-1 which was launched toward Venus with JAXA's "Akatsuki" Venus probe in 2010.
Barton describes Japan's massive H-IIA launcher as "not on our short list right now, mainly for reasons of cost".
"However, if the Japanese government decides to provide us with some financial support to reduce the price of an H-IIA launch, it might change the situation," said Barton. "Such support is permitted under the GLXP rules, so long as the total government contribution does not exceed 10% of the total mission cost. In that case, the change to 12-months operations at the Tanegashima launch facility in particular would certainly give us extra flexibility in our mission."
The Japanese government has initiated discussions which intend to promote lunar missions over the next 20 years including unmanned landing and robotic precursor missions by 2020, and the first manned mission by 2030.
"The Selene 2 mission - Japan's first lunar landing and rover mission - will not happen earlier than 2013. This means that the private GLXP teams might perform some basic rover tasks on the Moon earlier than the Japanese government's project. Private space mission initiatives such as GLXP will certainly impact government missions, rather than being impacted by them," said Yoshida.
JAXA is not alone in terms of exhibiting a shift in the wind that might affect GLXP teams. In early August, NASA's Lunar Lander Project Office started reaching out to the private space sector including GLXP teams by declaring that it will be purchasing, "specific data resulting from industry efforts to test and verify vehicle capabilities through demonstrations of small robotic landers. The purpose is to inform the development of future human and robotic lander vehicles."
Specifically, NASA is seeking, "information about the design and demonstration of an end-to-end lunar landing mission. This includes data associated with hardware design, development and testing; ground operations and integration; launch; trajectory correction maneuvers; lunar braking, burn and landing; and enhanced capabilities."
Furthermore, NASA seeks "information related to landing using a human mission profile; identification of hazards during landing; precision landing; and imagery and long-duration surface operations." Contracts totaling approximately $30 million through 2012 are planned. [1]
This news from NASA has certainly excited other US-based teams including Team Micro-Space, Team Next Giant Leap and Team Astrobotic - Astrobotic Technology Inc is a Carnegie Mellon University spin-off company - because this calls for NASA to spend as much as $1.5 million for any vital data derived from advance work including simulations done on the ground, that is, well before a US GLXP team actually pushes the launch button.
Will any new GLXP teams emerge in Asia? If this is going to happen, it better happen fast because the registration deadline for new teams is December 31, 2010.
"The registration fee has grown from the original $10,000 to the current $50,000 over time. Note that $50,000 is on the order of one tenth of one percent of the total mission cost for most teams," said Pomerantz. "There may be new teams forming in Asia, but none that have begun the registration process. We do not expect too many new teams, although we are tracking a few organizations that we know are considering it. Actually, we already have far more teams than we ever expected: our initial expectation was that we would get at most a dozen competitors."