I spoke for a few minutes a little while ago with John Carmack after Armadillo brought Pixel back to the staging area. The vehicle landed with two legs on the pad and two off the pad, which caused it to tip over. Carmack said the problem is with a sluggish control system that makes it […]
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According to X Prize officials, Armadillo Aerospace will try again later today for the Level 1 Lunar Lander Challenge. Pixel suffered only minor damage when it tipped over on landing and Armadillo believes it can be repaired. Also, a small piece of leather wrapped around the base of one of its legs fell off during […] Armadillo Aerospace’s Pixel vehicle flew the first leg of the Level One Lunar Lander Challenge, but the vehicle landed off the padd and tipped over. There are no fuel leaks reported. Here’s a video of a pair of Tripoli high-powered amateur rocket launches one minute apart a little over a half-hour ago. The first launch (on the far left of the screen) is about 10 seconds into the video, the second (in left-center) is about a minute later. The large white rocket in the center hasn’t […] Just got word (at 9:15 am MDT) that Armadillo is about 15 minutes away from fully pressurizing their LOX tanks, at which time they’ll be ready to fly. Just after 8:30 am MDT Armadillo started their second attempt to win the Level One Lunar Lander Challenge, trigging a 2.5-hour launch window. They’re in the process of taking Pixel out to the launch site right now. Otherwise it has been pretty quiet here, with no launches or engine tests so far this morning. That […] I talked with Ken Davidian of NASA’s Centennial Challenges program this morning and because of some logistical issues they won’t be able to have any of the microwave-powered climbers operate at the airport. Instead, they’ll head later in the day back to the county fairgrounds, several miles to the west where the qualifying runs took […] At about 7:15 am MDT Armadillo Aerospace showed up with a repaired Pixel vehicle, ready to make another attempt later this morning for the Lunar Lander Challenge Level 1. John Carmack said that they made a number of fixes to Pixel overnight, including replacing the landing legs with the ones from Texel, replacing some burned […] A quasi-random collection of links to other coverage from Friday’s events: MSNBC’s Alan Boyle has a good recap of yesterday’s events, including Armadillo’s flight as well as other events; SPACE.com’s X Prize special section has several reports on the day’s events. CNET News.com has an article and some photo galleries of the event; Clark Lindsay […] One of the other events that took place during the day Friday was a press conference where the Rocket Racing League (RRL) unveiled its first X-Racer rocketplane and its name, Thunderhawk. The event got some star power with guest appearances by Buzz Aldrin and Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico: (Richardson is the second […] |
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