In April of this year, the jet propulsion Laboratory of NASA (JPL) has announced a “Honey, I shrunk the payload to NASA,” a name which echoes the name of the 1989 movie “Honey, I shrunk the kids”.
“the Presented ideas were outstanding, says technologist of JPL Sabah Bucks. — These projects can help NASA create a lunar base, and a new direction in science.”
The purpose of the program under which a competition was announced, is to reduce the weight of the load in future missions. To launch heavy loads need a lot of fuel and money, and the vacant place will allow you to take to the moon and more equipment.
Small Rovers are cheaper and weigh less. In terms of the competition stated that the payload should be no more than a piece of soap (10х10х5 centimeters) and weigh up to 400 grams.
The winner of the competition was the Lunar Puli Rover Water Snooper created by Hungarian company Puli. The team received a prize of $ 30,000. Their Rover is designed to search for water ice on the surface of the satellite.
In another category “lunar environment” project won the Sun Slicer — miniature x-ray spectrometer from Team Sun Slicer developers who also received a prize of $ 30,000.
