Video: Will Pomerantz previews the LLC

I asked Will Pomerantz of the X Prize Foundation this morning to provide a brief preview of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge that starts tomorrow. Here’s will talking about the status of the teams and how the competition will compare with the 2006 NGLLC, also held at the Las Cruces airport.

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Lunar Lander Challenge update

The two teams competing in this year’s Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge (NGLLC), Armadillo and TrueZer0, set up at Las Cruces International Airport yesterday, and TrueZer0 formally got its FAA experimental permit yesterday as well (Armadillo got its permit earlier this month.) Current plans call for three flight windows each day (compared to two last […]

Previewing the 2008 Lunar Lander Challenge

Immediately after the ISPCS will be the 2008 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge (NGLLC), run by the X Prize Foundation with prize money provided by NASA’s Centennial Challenges program. It was only in the last few weeks that the date and location for the competition was finalized. Original plans called for the event to take […]

Previewing ISPCS 2008

The 2008 edition of the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) will be taking place the next two days in Las Cruces, New Mexico. (I’m writing this from a hotel room in Las Cruces, and will be at the conference.) The conference started in 2005 as simply the ISPS; the “and Commercial” part […]

2008 Lunar Lander Challenge plans announced

The X Prize Foundation announced late Friday afternoon that the 2008 Lunar Lander Challenge (LLC) will be held at Holloman AFB in New Mexico on October 24-25. Unlike the past two years, the LLC appears to be taking place as a standalone event and not part of an X Prize Cup. The press release notes […]

Private human spaceflight conference call for papers

Reader Garrett Smith passed along a note about the call for papers for the IAA Symposium on Private Manned Access to Space, to be held May 28-30, 2008 in Arcachon, France. The conference will focus on the technical, legal and regulatory, financial, and other issues associated with human suborbital and orbital spaceflight. The deadline for […]

Official recap

The X Prize Foundation, as anticipated, issued a press release Sunday evening reviewing the past two days of the X Prize Cup. The release plays up the fact that Armadillo nearly won the level 1 prize Saturday afternoon despite a busted engine; the release cites fuel line contamination for the igniter problems experienced by Armadillo […]

Video of Sunday morning flight attempt

Here’s a video I shot of Armadillo Aerospace’s first leg of their attempt Sunday morning to win the Lunar Lander Challenge. Due to poor camerawork on my part the lander goes out of frame for a few seconds during its descent. You can see the lander hover for the final seconds of its flight to […]

Wrapping up the X Prize Cup

Brett Alexander, the executive director for space and X Prize Cup for the X Prize Foundation, brief the media a little while ago about the status of Armadillo’s final, failed flight. Some key points:

There’s still little in the way of technical information about the engine failure this afternoon. There was not a catastrophic explosion […]

Hard start finishes Armadillo

Armadillo Aerospace has apparently suffered another, and this time catastrophic, hard start upon engine ignition, dashing their chances of winning any part of this year’s Lunar Lander Challenge. This time the hard start took place at the beginning of the first leg of the flight (not the return leg, as was the case this morning […]