

Astrobotic unveils new lunar rover Polaris

 –  Reporter, Pittsburgh Business Times

Carnegie Mellon University and Astrobotic Technology Inc. are one step closer to the moon with the unveiling on Monday of a new lunar rover that will land on the surface sometime in 2015.

Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic is shooting for the moon and the $20 million Google Lunar X prize. It developed the solar-powered Griffin landing module and a smaller Red Rover wheeled explorer as one of a handful of entities hoping to win the prize. But Astrobotic developed the larger, heavier Polaris lunar rover to explore one of the moon's poles and to drill for water. That's because in the past two years, scientists have determined positively that there is some kind of water on the moon, said William "Red" Whittaker, CEO of Astrobotic and the director of the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon University.

LOOK INSIDE: Astrobotic's Polaris lunar rover

Whittaker and other Astrobotic employees showed off the Polaris rover, which when it lifts off aboard the Falcon 9 rocket will weigh about 518 pounds and carry sophisticated imaging equipment, carbon-fiber and composite material, other payload and a drill to search for the water that scientists believe is buried in the lunar surface.

"This is a working machine," Whittaker said of Polaris.

It's much heavier than the 176-pound Red Rover, which was Astrobotic's first rover project. The mission of Polaris is to find water on the lunar surface. That meant that it would have to be bigger and heavier than Red Rover.

"It (Red Rover) would have been an explorer, where this is doing science," said Astrobotic President John Thornton, pointing at Polaris.

The rover was taken for a spin -- only 1 mph, and up and down a platform in the Astrobotic lab -- by Tom Carlone, who manipulated a Microsoft Xbox controller to move Polaris.

 –  Reporter, Pittsburgh Business Times