Armadillo Aerospace’s twin Pixel and Texel vehicles use four spherical fuel tanks placed around a central engine (Image: Armadillo Aerospace)
This year’s sole competitor for the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge did not win the $350,000 prize on Friday at the Wirefly X Prize Cup in Las Cruces, New Mexico, US.
Armadillo Aerospace of Mesquite, Texas, US, will try to rebuild their damaged Pixel rocket and try again on Saturday.
The competition, designed to help develop technologies necessary to land rockets on the Moon, was timed. The team had 2.5 hours to drive the rocket to the launch pad, have it lift off and hover for 90 seconds as it moved to a second launch pad, then do the same thing in reverse.
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Pixel made the first leg of the flight, launching vertically from one pad and translating over to another pad 100 metres away before landing.
The rocket was supposed to land at 1.5 metres per second, but it came in at 2 metres per second. The hard landing caused its legs to break off. “I was fully [prepared] to fly back and land on stumps,” says Armadillo co-founder John Carmack, who piloted the vehicle. Carmack is also the creator of the video game Doom.
But when the engine shut down, a little tongue of flame – possibly fuelled by ethanol sprayed inside the engine – licked up the side of the rocket. It burned some insulation and fried some of the rocket’s wiring, preventing the vehicle from making its planned return trip.
Cannibalising parts
Luckily, team members brought a twin vehicle called Texel to the competition. So they will cannibalise Texel’s legs to attach them to Pixel and rework the wiring overnight.
Carmack says he will also ask the US Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees the event, for permission to tweak the vehicle’s flight control software overnight.
Friday’s event was level 1 of the Lunar Lander Challenge, which carries a prize of $350,000. Carmack says he would prefer to keep trying for this level.
Level 2 has more prize money – the top prize is $1 million – but is also more challenging. That requires a flight of 180 seconds and involves landing on simulated lunar terrain, making it even more difficult. Armadillo’s longest flight to date is 115 seconds.
Team members also had other problems on Friday. They did not have a hangar for their vehicle, so during torrential downpours that lashed the site on Wednesday, rainwater got into a liquid oxygen storage tank and froze, blocking the tank’s output.
Since that situation was beyond their control, the competition’s judges gave them more time and they were able to take the liquid oxygen from another tank.
No competitors
Armadillo is the only team competing in the challenge this year – three other teams registered but could not get their vehicles perfected in time.
Pixel is comprised of four spherical fuel and oxidiser tanks that are each about 1 metre in diameter, while the entire rocket is a squat 2 metres tall. It cost a total of about $50,000, with about $40,000 going just for the computer.
Carmack says the rocket itself could probably not be used for an actual lunar lander. But he says the competition is important for stimulating fresh ideas from smaller companies that do not normally get the chance to vie for NASA funding.
His team, for example, developed the rockets in only six months for a total of about $200,000. “That should shame some of the other contractors, who spend tens of billions of dollars [on their designs],” he says.
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