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Flagship
client begins race to the moon
 For
now, the lunar rover looks like
a child’s toy truck with
over-sized wheels, but that will
probably change. The engineers
of Team LunaTrex have about
three years to finalize their
plans for an unmanned spacecraft
that will land on the moon and
perhaps win them $30 million.
The team, led by Anderson
businessman Pete Bitar, is one
of 10 competing in Google’s
Lunar X Prize competition. The
10 teams registered for the
space race were in California
last week to announce their
plans, and some members of
LunaTrex were back in Anderson
Monday for a presentation at the
Flagship Enterprise Center.
Bitar and others on the team
said they are confident of
LunaTrex’s chances of winning.
“We feel that this is not
reinventing the wheel,” said
Bitar, who is president of the
engineering firm AirBuoyant,
LLC.“Every element of the effort
is accounted for by the
experience of individuals on the
team,” he said. “There isn’t a
single thing that we’re trying
to do that somebody on our team
has not done.”
To win the prize money, LunaTrex
must land a spacecraft on the
moon that can travel for at
least 500 meters on the lunar
surface and transmit video and
data back to earth by Dec. 31,
2012.
After that date, the prize
amount drops to $15 million
until the end of 2014 when the
competition concludes.
LunaTrex plans to launch its
spacecraft by late 2011. They
estimate it will take about six
months for the device to reach
the moon.
In the next year, the team will
develop its plans and seek out
private sponsorships to fund the
project. Bitar said the team
hopes to begin working full-time
on the project in 2009.
Team member Joseph Gangestad
said he left the meeting at
Google’s California offices
feeling like LunaTrex was in a
good position to go on and win
the prize.
“Everyone here is pretty much an
engineer of some sort and
actually done work in this area,
and that’s why I now feel
extremely confident that we have
as good a chance as any of the
other teams,” said Gangestad, a
graduate student at Purdue
University with a specialization
in astrodynamics.
LunarTrex’s nine team members
include engineers affiliated
with business and universities
in Indiana, Ohio, Alabama and
Arizona.
--Barrett Newkirk is a
reporter for the Anderson Herald
Bulletin. Story reprinted with
permission.
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