NASA is soliciting proposals from the scientific and aerospace communities for design ideas for its next lunar lander.
NASA officials said the Altair spacecraft will deliver four astronauts
to the lunar surface late during the next decade. According to NASA
Altair will be capable of landing four astronauts on the moon,
providing life support and a base for week long initial surface
exploration missions, and returning the crew to the Orion spacecraft
that will bring them home to Earth.

“By soliciting ideas and suggestions from industry and the
science community, NASA hopes to foster a collaborative environment
during this early design effort,” said Jeff Hanley, Constellation
Program manager in a statement. “Such collaboration will support the
development of a safe, reliable and technologically sound vehicle for
our crews.”

According to NASA Altair will be capable of landing four astronauts
on the moon, providing life support and a base for weeklong initial
surface exploration missions, and returning the crew to the Orion spacecraft that will bring them home to Earth.

Altair will launch aboard an Ares V rocket into low Earth orbit,
where it will rendezvous with the Orion crew vehicle.NASA is seeking
responses in two primary areas before awarding a prime contract for
lunar lander design, development, testing and evaluation. Those areas
include an evaluation of NASA’s current developmental concept and
innovative safety improvements, and recommendations for
industry-government partnerships.

In a statement NASA said it expects to award study contracts during
this year’s first quarter. A total of $1.5 million is available for
awards, with the maximum individual award being $350,000. The contract
performance period is six months.

NASA has already tapped MIT
to lead a $375 million mission to map the moon and reconstruct its
thermal history. The lunar gravity information will let any future
manned or unmanned missions to land on the moon. Such data will be used
to program the descent to the surface to avoid a crash landing and will
also help target desirable landing sites, NASA said.

And while they won’t be flying to the moon but rather flying around
the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., the space
agency has set April 4-5 as the dates for itsThe 15th Annual Great Moonbuggy Race.

The race is for high school and college teams where they build and
race their lightweight, two-person lunar vehicles. More than 40 student
teams from 18 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Canada and
India have already registered.

Students are required to design a vehicle that addresses a series of
engineering problems that are similar to problems faced by the original
Moonbuggy team. The Apollo
lunar roving vehicle became a two-person, four-wheeled vehicle. It was
10 feet 2 inches long, 44 inches high with a 7-foot 6-inch wheel base.
It stood in stark contrast to the towering Saturn V Launch Vehicle. The
lunar surface vehicle had large mesh wheels, antenna appendages, tool
caddiesand cameras. The finished lunar rover weighed only about 450
pounds or just 75 pounds in the moon’s one-sixth gravity. At the same
time, the rover could carry up to about 1,000 Earth-pounds — more than
twice its own weight, according to NASA.

According to NASA rules,
each Moonbuggy will be human powered and carry two students, one female
and one male, over a half-mile simulated lunar terrain course including
“craters”, rocks, “lava” ridges, inclines and “lunar” soil.Moonbuggy
entries are expected to be of “proof-of-concept” and engineering test
model nature, rather than final production models. Each student team of
six members is responsible for building their own buggy, and the course
drivers must also be builders of the vehicle, NASA said.

The teams must negotiate a simulated moon surface along a half-mile,
obstacle-strewn course, racing their human-powered vehicles in time
trials, rather than side by side.The three fastest-finishing
moonbuggies in both the high school and college categories win prizes.
Students can win additional awards for the most unique moonbuggy
design, best overall design, most improved team, best rookie team and
most spirited team.

The deadline for registration is Feb. 1. Information concerning the competition is available at http://moonbuggy.msfc.nasa.gov