News - Northrop Grumman To Sponsor NASA Lunar Lander Challenge

Northrop Grumman To Sponsor NASA Challenge

http://cbs2.com/topstories/local_story_284135056.html

(CBS) LOS ANGELES Northrop Grumman Corp. will be the title sponsor for
NASA's Lunar Lander Challenge, a competition to develop vehicles to
ferry humans and cargo between the moon and a lunar orbit, the Los
Angeles-based defense giant said Wednesday.

The company signed an agreement with the Santa Monica-based X Prize
Foundation to help underwrite the cost of staging the competition. NASA
is putting up the prize money, which totals $2 million.

The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge is divided into two
sections.

Level 1 requires a vehicle to take off vertically, climb to at least
150 feet, remain airborne for at least 90 seconds while traveling
horizontally to a landing pad 300 feet away, and then land vertically.

The requirements for the next level are that a vehicle ascend to 150
feet, hover for three minutes, then land at a precise point on a rocky
surface similar to lunar terrain more than some 990 feet from the
launch site.

The competition will be staged for the first time Oct. 20-21 at Las
Cruces International Airport in Las Cruces, N.M.

The X Prize Foundation was started by the Iranian-American Ansari
family, sponsor of the Ansari X Prize -- awarded for building the first
non-governmental, reusuable spacecraft.

Businesswoman Anousheh Ansari became the first female space tourist
earlier this year when she went into orbit on a Russian-made Soyuz
spacecraft.

.