Here's an intriguing development from my previous faculty home, Carnegie Mellon. Interesting, Red Whitaker's comment about public participation.
CMU SPINOFF RECEIVES $10 MILLION NASA CONTRACT TO LEAD MOON EXPEDITION Carnegie Mellon spinoff Astrobotic Technology, led by CMU University Professor William “Red” Whittaker, has received a contract for up to $10 million from NASA to lead a robotic expedition to the moon in April 2013. The Astrobotic team includes CMU, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Aerojet, Scaled Composites, International Rectifier, Harmonic Drive LLC and Caterpillar Inc. The mission will explore the lunar surface near an Apollo site with a “social” robot able to Tweet and update its Facebook account as it chats with fans on Earth. The robot’s high-definition cameras will show the Moon in 3-D as it is directed by amateur drivers over the Web and at science centers. NASA will pay Astrobotic for data about how to land at a precise location, which hasn’t been done by previous Mars and Moon robots, as well as how to avoid last-minute obstacles like boulders and small craters unseen from orbit. The NASA contract also pays for information about how the Astrobotic robot survives the lunar night — two weeks of deep freeze as cold as liquid nitrogen. Each accomplishment is worth $500,000 to $2.5 million. Astrobotic can collect up to $1.1 million with data delivered prior to launch, and the remainder after its spacecraft lands. “This private-sector Moon expedition combines small and large companies, and taps into the intellectual capital of the world’s leading computer science and robotics university,” said Whittaker, founder of Astrobotic Technology and the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon. “Together we’ll create a lunar exploration mission at a breakthrough cost that enables public participation from around the world.” A unique aspect of the expedition is the inclusion of interdisciplinary arts projects created by the students and faculty in CMU’s STUDIO for Creative Inquiry. CMU Professor Lowry Burgess is coordinating the historic Moon Arts project. A renowned space artist, Burgess is overseeing musicians, architects, poets, designers, roboticists, engineers and visual artists involved in the arts effort. Burgess created the first official art payload taken into outer space by NASA in 1989 among his many space art works. -- George Duncan georgeduncanart.com (505) 983-6895 Represented by ViVO Contemporary Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward. Soren Kierkegaard
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