Private European group wants to send 2 rovers to the moon on a Falcon 9 in 2018

[ecarfan]

At least that is the story according to the Daily Mail, which is not a generally reliable source. See PTScientists plans to reach the lunar surface by 2018 | Daily Mail Online

Quote: "In the race to be the first group to land a private lander on the moon, a team of European scientists has announced its plans to reach the lunar surface by 2018. The group, called PTScientists, has built a landing module and two rovers, which it plans to launch on board Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The rover will search the lunar surface in the hopes of finding Nasa's buggy, which was left on the moon by Gene Cernan in 1971."

The article states that the group, PTScientists, has support from Vodaphone and Audi. The rovers were "developed by Audi".

A skeptic might conclude that Audi is more serious about building BEVs for lunar use than terrestrial use, based on how many press releases Audi has put out in the past several years about their amazing BEV concept cars and "future" production BEVs, none of which have materialized yet (no, the E-Tron doesn't count, it's a hybrid).

 

[BluestarE3]

Separated at birth?

WALL-E

AUDI-E

 

[ICUDoc]

Seems unlikely but bloody fantastic fun it it's real!

 

[zag2me]

Would be very interesting to see the old Lunar buggy and the state its in!

 

[Grendal]

Would be very interesting to see the old Lunar buggy and the state its in!

Pristine condition. Just some moon dust all over it and dead batteries. No wear at all since it has been in vacuum for the whole time.

 

[Nikxice]

It would be fun to see this PTScientist group succeed with their lunar rovers, but they could run into problems with visiting an Apollo landing site. collectSPACE just published a story that covers this aspect of the NASA Authorization Bill for 2017 that Trump just signed.

White House to look at how best to 'protect and preserve' Apollo moon landing sites | collectSPACE

Congress has attempted to introduce legislation in the past, specifically to protect the sites of Apollo 11 and 17. Perhaps now, with lunar commercial ventures on the horizon, this effort will start to gain traction. At some point we'll not only see lunar rovers, but eventually private spacecraft that can liftoff and rendezvous in lunar orbit. The RCA color camera mounted on 17's rover was the only one to successfully track the ascent stage of the LM after it left the lunar surface. NASA lawyers might attempt to intervene, but I know of a space memorabilia auction house a few miles away that someday would love to get their hands on just such an artifact. Likely fetch more than a couple of south of the border Brady worn game shirts!

 

[Pricee2]

Maybe NASA should book a flight with Spacex and put a chain link fence around the sites.

 

[MacroP]

Dave Jones, an EEng who runs EEVBlog on YouTube here in Oz had a few interviews with an engineer on the project last year. Extremely interesting stuff about the electronics, if you're into that, and they even had a prototype rover in his lab. Haven't watched them for a while but I seem to remember in the interview they were not revealing who was going to launch the rovers but thinking at the time that it could only be SpaceX anyway especially with their comparatively small budget.

They do mention in one of the videos I think, about their proximity to the existing lunar sites and saying some about having to keep a distance of around 400metres from memory.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Well, if SpaceX just happens to be sending stuff around the moon anyway maybe it could drop something off...

 

[bxr140]

Pristine condition. Just some moon dust all over it and dead batteries. No wear at all since it has been in vacuum for the whole time.

Plus a little radiation and micrometeorite damage.

 

[swaltner]

AUDI-E

This rover is used in the new Alien: Covenant movie set to be released in May. It's briefly shown at 35 seconds into the trailer, which among other places is posted at Alien: Covenant - Movie Trailers - iTunes.