Google Lunar X PRIZE Proposed Landing Sites

Dr Philip J. Stooke of The University of Western Ontario has put together a cool proposed landing site map based on published data from the Google Lunar X Prize Teams. We will be updating this as the public information gets updated.

Got a cool idea for a visualization? Email editor@evadot.com!

About the Google Lunar X PRIZE

The Google Lunar X PRIZE is igniting a new era of lunar exploration by offering the largest international incentive prize of all time. A total of $30 million in prizes are available to the first privately funded teams to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon and have that robot travel 500 meters over the lunar surface and send images and data back to the Earth. Teams must be at least 90% privately funded, though commercially reasonable sales to government customers are allowed without limit.

Find out more at The Google Lunar X PRIZE Website

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Tags: 30 million, google, government customers, incentive prize, lunar exploration, lunar surface, stooke, surface of the moon, university of western ontario, X PRIZE

About the Author

Michael is the founder of Evadot.com and as such can often be found cavorting with penguins or eating herring. Michael can be reached at mike@evadot.com and at michaeldoornbos.com and on twitter as @mrdoornbos

http://twitter.com/TeamJURBAN JURBAN – GLXP Team

JURBAN will be checking out Apollo 12 at Oceanus Procellarum, with our swarming robotic platform.nhttp://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/teams/jurbannhttp://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Jurban-Team/101330546581386
http://www.oz9aec.net/ Alex Csete

Can these be put into Google Earth -> Moon (http://earth.google.com/moon/)? Could evolve to include models of teams lander and rover

http://michaeldoornbos.com mrdoornbos

Was just thinking about this this morning. Maybe as a secondary model for people who want super detailed information. I also think there’s a lot of value in a simple map for people who are interested, but aren’t quite as into it as some of us. So a high level map, and then maybe Google Earth for the diving into it.

http://www.oz9aec.net/ Alex Csete

I came to think about it while listening to the PTS podcast where you guys were talking about it. I agree it should be additional because the simple map is very good to give overview. I don’t know if there is a “Google Earth URL protocol”, i.e. if I hover the mouse over a landing site on the simple map it shows as a hyperlink then if clicked can start Google Earth and go to the site.
http://twitter.com/Pomerantz William Pomerantz

We’re going to be refreshing our existing “Tour of the Moon in Google Earth” once we’ve announced our final roster of teams.

http://twitter.com/Pomerantz William Pomerantz

Suggestion: Can you add a “Last Updated” to this one, too? And maybe a quick one sentence summary explaining changes every time you update (on both this and the Scorecard)?

http://michaeldoornbos.com mrdoornbos

Funny you should mention this. I’m wrapping up the “new” version of this visualization now. Instead of a static image, it draws the circles from a database table in real time. This will make this easier to maintain long term. I’m hoping to publish it this week if my day job doesn’t get too crazy.

http://twitter.com/Pomerantz William Pomerantz

Cool changes! I’d recommend a different font (almost impossible to read the team names, at least in Chrome). And the change log. Really looking forward to seeing the other things you’ve got in store! Maybe the ability to exchange the underlying map for other datasets, e.g. altimetry?
http://michaeldoornbos.com mrdoornbos

Yeah, now that the hard part is done, we’re doing a LOT of new stuff with this code base. In all honesty the hold up was mostly me learning modern JavaScript again. Things will progress more quickly now. Thanks for the encouragement!

Anonymous

Perhaps there is a way to incorporate the sites in a game such as Mass Effect, where the player controls a futuristic craft and can explore planets and moons across the galaxy…across the universe. It would be cool to scan the moon from your spaceship and send a shuttle to investigate the sites where data recorders were left for a future mission to find and investigate. This concept is used to great purpose in Mass Effect 2 and it provides the player the necessary impetus to move along in the storyline. Just a thought!