With new techniques can make moon mining a possible profitable venture with use of private balloon space craft and robots cybrooid television as the new advertisement. These life sized working prototype of the Polaris rover that could mine the moon in 2015 The Polaris rover is 5 ½ feet tall, 7 feet wide and almost 8 feet long. Moon comes back into reality for a while driving a profit making industries forty years later it a program that should never been scrapped now Polaris rover will search for ice that can be drilled to stock future moon bases Expected to relay live video from the lunar surface throughout its life showing where fresh moon springs will be located replenishing trusty cyber bases. It can move at about a foot a second on 2-foot-diameter composite wheels. Its suspension will enable the rover to rise up over rough terrain, but also lower itself to the ground to perform drilling. In Recent studies indication that water might be present in noteworthy quantities at the Lunar poles has increased interest in the Moon. Polar colonies could also avoid the problem of long Lunar nights (about 354 hours a little more than two weeks) and take advantage of the sun continuously The rover will weigh 150 kilograms, or about 330 pounds, and can accommodate a drill and science payload of up to 70 kilograms. Hope teem up with return to earth rockets from its Base Polaris is a first of its kind solar-powered robot that will search for potentially rich deposits of water ice on the moon. The Nasa radar instrument, known as a Mini-SAR, has captured many of the permanently shadowed regions that exist at both poles of the Moons.These dark areas are extremely cold and scientists had believed that volatile material, including water ice, could be present in large quantities there.'The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that water creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring on the moon,' said Paul Spudis from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.
Observations by NASA and Indian spacecraft suggest that a substantial amount of water ice could exist at the lunar poles. That ice could be a source of water, fuel and oxygen for future expeditions, researchers say. Polaris can bore one meter into the lunar surface and can operate in lunar regions characterized by dark, long shadows and a sun that hugs the horizon. It has been developed for an expedition to the moon's northern pole that would launch from Cape Canaveral on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle. Polaris is a flight prototype but has the same configuration as the rover that will eventually land on the moon. It includes a number of flight-worthy components, including wheels and chassis beams constructed of light, but tough composite materials. This will enable Astronautic team members to spend the coming months testing and improving the robot's computer vision, navigation and planning software, and software that can plot the rover's position on the moon within 10 feet. While Curiosity begins to explore the Martian surface, the moon may soon be home to another rover - and this one plans to mine. Astronautic Technology today revealed Polaris, a rover it hopes to send to the moon on top of a SpaceX rocket in October 2015. It will search for ice that could help future explorers set up a moon base - and is powered by solat panels that give it the appearance of having a Mohawk Polaris will have a drill capable of getting a metre under the lunar surface to look for sign of ice. The Polaris rover will hunt for ice on the moon that can be mined to help set up moon bases for future explorers. Astrobotic led by CMU's William "Red" Whittaker — develops robotics technology for planetary missions. 'It is the first rover developed specifically for drilling lunar ice' said Whittaker. Other robots built by the Field Robotics Center have developed technologies necessary for lunar drilling, but none of them were ever meant to leave Earth. 'What Polaris does is bring those many ideas together into a rover configuration that is capable of going to the moon to find ice,' Whittaker added.
These new discoveries show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought.'The Mini-SAR's findings are being published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The results are consistent with recent findings of other Nasa instruments and add to the growing scientific understanding of the multiple forms of water found on the Moon. The agency's Moon Mineralogy Mapper discovered water molecules in the Moon's polar regions, while water vapor was detected by NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS.To find the ice, a rover must operate as close to the dark poles as possible, but not so far that it can't use solar arrays for power, Whittaker said. Polaris has three large solar arrays, arranged vertically to capture light from low on the horizon.The solar arrays will be capable of an average of 250 watts of electrical power.Polaris also makes use of software, pioneered in CMU's NASA-funded Hyperion robot, that keeps track of the rover's position relative to the sun's rays to maximize solar energy and husbands battery power for use in the long shadows and dark regions found at the poles.The lander being developed to drop the lunar mining rover on the moon's surface Whittaker said the lunar day lasts about 14 Earth days, though only about 10 days are suitable for water prospecting at the poles. The Astronautic team expects Polaris could drill 10 to 100 holes during that time as it locates and characterizes water ice deposits. Astrobotic, in partnership with CMU, is also vying for the Google Lunar X Prize of more than $20 million. Polaris is one of two Moon rovers under development by Astrobotic in competition for the Google contest, which offers a total of $30m in awards to privately funded projects exploring the Moon. First prize – $20m – will be awarded to the company that can 'safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, have that robot travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send video, images and data back to the Earth.'If Polaris successfully survives the long, frigid lunar nights, as anticipated, the prospecting mission could be extended indefinitely. Astrobotic has won nine lunar contracts from NASA worth $3.6 million, including one to evaluate how Polaris can accommodate NASA's ice-prospecting instruments during a three-mile traverse near the moon's north pole.
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