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14 February/March 2017 | Unmanned Systems Technology Five autonomous rovers are aiming to reach the Moon this year in a bid to win the $20m Google LunarX prize and test out new technology (writes Nick Flaherty). The five teams are the ones with confirmed launch plans out of 30 original contenders, and have to take off before the end of December. Plans have changed over the past year as launch deals failed to materialise, but SpaceIL, Moon Express, Synergy Moon, Team Indus and Hakuto have each secured a contract to launch their spacecraft. The rover developed by Team Indus will use micro-cameras developed by French space agency CNES, the first time they have been used in space. They will also be used as the Remote Micro-Imager on the next NASA rover to Mars in 2020. The cameras, known as Caspex (Colour cmos cAmera for SPace Exploration), use three stacked boards in a 3D cube measuring 35 x 35 x 27 mm. The top level contains the CMOS image sensor with 2048 x 2048 pixels on a 5.5 µm pitch. Micro-lenses are deposited on the top of each pixel to improve performance. An FPGA on the second layer links the sensor to the rover, and this can also handle preliminary image processing such as averaging, adding and sub- framing. This layer also includes non- volatile, radiation-tolerant memory. To get the rover and cameras to the Moon, Team Indus will be using a rocket from the Indian Space Research Organization that is scheduled to launch a polar satellite in December. The ISRO rocket will deliver a lander, called HHK-1, into orbit, which will carry two rovers – one weighing 10 kg and the other 4 kg – from Hakuto. The lander will take 18-21 days to reach the Moon, delivering both rovers to the surface. The prize organisers have modified the schedule so that Team Indus and Hakuto can participate as a result of this late launch date. However, for either team to win, the other three earlier launches must all have failed. SpaceIL from Israel has secured a slot on a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX, which is scheduled for launch in the second half of this year. The Falcon rockets, which themselves have a main section that returns to Earth autonomously, are back in operation after an explosion in September 2016. The SpaceIL lander, which uses a STIM300 IMU from Sensonor, will land on the Moon’s surface and then ‘hop’ in order to travel the 500 m required for the competition. Moon Express is contracted with Rocket Lab USA, and its lunar mission is scheduled to take place this year using the MX-1E lunar lander on Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket. Synergy Moon is using a Neptune 8 rocket from one of its team members, Interorbital Systems, to carry a lunar lander and rover to the surface of the Moon from an open-ocean location off the California coast during the second half of 2017. Hakuto originally planned to share with the Andy rover developed by Astrobotics, which is probably the most high-profile team not to achieve a launch. Astrobotics planned to carry three systems, including Andy and the Hakuto rover, to the surface in a lander called Peregrine. However, it still plans to launch a Moon mission with an autonomous mining system. Another team that hasn’t made the final stage is the Part Time Scientists. This German team’s Lunar Quattro rover was 3D printed from aluminium and titanium, and was backed by Audi. Teams vie for Moon prize Space vehicles The Hakuto rover is one of five autonomous vehicles travelling to the Moon later this year