X Prize Foundation via AP |
Masten Space Systems' Xombie rocket rises from its pad at California's Mojave Air and Space Port during Wednesday's Lunar Lander Challenge flight. |
Masten Space Systems' Xombie rocket has prevailed in its second attempt to qualify for a $150,000 rocket prize from NASA. The first attempt, back on Sept. 16, ended at the halfway point of the required round trip due to an engine leak, but today the rocket went the full distance.
The prize is being offered through the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, a competition that was set up with NASA backing to encourage the development of new rocket technologies. Xombie was built to go after the second prize in what's known as the Level 1 competition. (Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace won the $350,000 first prize last year.)
To qualify for the $150,000, the alcohol-fueled rocket had to take off from a starting pad in California's Mojave Desert, rise up to a height of more than 160 feet (50 meters), hover for at least 90 seconds and then land on another pad for refueling. All that was done - and then Xombie retraced its steps through the air, back to the starting point.
Xombie satisfied all the requirements, hanging in the air for 91 seconds on the way home.
"We flew us a rocket ship!" David Masten, the team's leader and chief executive officer of Masten Space Systems, was quoted as saying.
Will Pomerantz, who is managing the Lunar Lander Challenge as director of space prizes for the X Prize Foundation, said Xombie came within 11 centimeters (4.3 inches) of its target on the pad for its final landing. Doug Graham, a spokesman for Masten Space Systems, told me that the average accuracy for today's two landings was around 16 centimeters (6.3 inches).
In its own Twitter update, NASA's Centennial Challenges program confirmed that Xombie's qualifying flight was "successfully complete."
NGLLC / X Prize Foundation |
| The Masten Space Systems team gathers around their Xombie rocket. Team leader David Masten is standing in the middle with his arms folded. XCOR Aerospace's Randall Clague holds the Xombie mascot as he kneels in front. |
Masten and his teammates still have to wait until the end of the month to find out whether any of their competitors for the $150,000 prize - California-based Unreasonable Rocket or BonNovA - can do better.
The same goes for Armadillo Aerospace, which qualified for the challenge's more ambitious $1 million Level 2 prize last month. Masten, Unreasonable Rocket and BonNova are going after Level 2 prizes as well. (Second prize is $500,000.)
Graham said that if Masten and his team could maintain the kind of accuracy they achieved today during their upcoming Level 2 flight, "they'll beat Armadillo" for the million dollars. The best thing about today's outing was that it proved there's more than one prizeworthy competitor out there.
"Now it's no longer a one-man show," Graham said.
David Masten himself voiced that sentiment in a statement distributed by the Commercial Spaceflight Federation: "The Xombie's flights have established Masten Space Systems as a serious competitor. This is not just good for Masten, but good news for the commercial spaceflight industry. It shows that we have grown to the point that many teams now have the skills to build and fly successful rockets."
Although the contest is called the Lunar Lander Challenge, the point of the exercise is not so much to produce an actual moon lander as it is to push ahead technologies that could be used in future suborbital or even orbital spacecraft. Such rockets could be useful for passenger space tourism as well as cut-rate space research.
To follow the action, search for the #NGLLC tag on Twitter. This item was last updated at 9:10 p.m. ET.
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