The Part-Time Scientist have been busy last month, even too busy to update this blog. We have been giving interviews, marked a space anniversary, and are headed for a milestone.
Facebook Milestone
Our Facebook presence is gathering steam and attention. We're almost at 10K Facebook fans who like our ambitious goal of sending a privately funded rover mission to the moon. If you have been following our progress and are on Facebook, why not show your support? To celebrate this upcoming milestone we will award one (or maybe more) of our t-shirts to the first poster of a screenshot with more than 10K Facebook fans as a thank you from our team.
Interviews
The Part-Time Scientist have been spreading their message of lunar exploration in many places.
Reminder: we had our first interview with a local German TV station with a overview of the project and Asimov Jr.’s outing to a local sandy beach: RTL Regional
We had our first interview with an international TV network: Arte
Interview with Frankfurter Rundschau (German): Mit der Doktorarbeit in den Orbit: Karsten Becker, team leader of the Electronics group, explains how he joined the Part-Time Scientists, and how his academic work on FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) applies to space exploration and the Google Lunar X-Prize.
An interview with Spiegel Online (German), Zum Mond mit Marke Eigenbau, gives an overview of the Google Lunar X-Prize and introduces the challenges and opportunities of GLXP-Teams compared to national space agencies like NASA. It also covers some of the work we have already done, e.g. on the prototype Asimov Jr. rover, and some of how we are planning to proceed. If you are new to the Google Lunar X-Prize or the Part-Time Scientist (and you read German) this is a good article to read
Anniversary
11/10/2010 (November 10 2010) marks the 40th anniversary of the Lunochod landing. Lunochod I was the first Soviet mission to the moon. It was an unmanned mission; the landed vehicle was remotely operated by drivers in the Soviet Union, but it was the first time an unmanned mission had successfully landed on the moon, and hence an inspiration to us. More here
Miscellaneous
We've been thinking about software failures. The software writing process is several steps removed from the actual conditions of launch and space travel. If the minute steps required to assemble, test and deploy a space payload are not anticipated at software development time, errors can creep in and destroy the mission. Just like that.
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