Metal 3D Printers

GOOGLE LUNAR XPRIZE

Google and the XPRIZE Foun­da­tion an­nounced the Google Lunar XPRIZE on Sep­tem­ber 13th, 2007. The chal­lenge of this in­ter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tion is to suc­cess­fully per­form the first pri­vate mis­sion to the moon. To win the race the win­ner must land a ve­hi­cle on the lunar sur­face, which does not only drive there for at least 500 me­ters but also sends high-res­o­lu­tion im­ages and data back to Earth. The Google Lunar XPRIZE is the start of a new era of space­flight and lunar ex­plo­ration which is doped with the largest in­ter­na­tional prize the world has seen.

The Team Part-Time Sci­en­tists GmbH is the first Ger­man and only pri­vately funded com­pany that has set it­self the goal to per­form the Google Lunar XPRIZE moon mis­sion until the end of 2015. The PTS team works on this pro­ject with over 100 de­vel­op­ers, en­gi­neers and sci­en­tists around the world since 2009

The is­sued rover Asi­mov R3C is the cur­rent pro­to­type of the PTS team that passed through all nec­es­sary tests for space qual­i­fi­ca­tion since 2009. Amongst other tests the rover had to sur­vive the cold and heat in­side of a vac­uum cham­ber and had to with­stand the as­so­ci­ated mul­ti­ple loads of a rocket launch dur­ing vi­bra­tion tests.

Parts of this test ve­hi­cle (wheels & cam­era adapter) were pro­duced on SLM equip­ment.