ATA press release

Lunar X Prize News Update

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:41:08 GMT

Feb. 21, 2008

Ten competing teams fully committed to landing on the moon! Compared to the original X-Prize, this is a very large number at such an early stage in the competition. It was particularly exciting to hear two teams announce at today's press briefing that they are striving for lunar landings in 2009!!! The competition is off to a roaring start, and the SETI Institute is proud to be partnering with the X Prize Foundation and Google in the next step of privately funded space exploration.

Tom Pierson
CEO, SETI Institute

The Allen Telescope Array (ATA), operated by the SETI Institute, will serve as a preferred downlink provider for communications from the Moon to the Earth; operated by SETI, which will provide downlink services at no cost to competing teams.

The X PRIZE Foundation Announces Official Contenders in Private Moon Race

Ten Teams Registered to Compete for $30 Million Google Lunar X PRIZE

February 21, 2008, Mountain View, CA – The X PRIZE Foundation and Google, Inc. today announced the first ten teams to register for the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a remarkable $30 million in prizes. This international group of teams will compete to land a privately funded robotic craft on the Moon that is capable of roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to the Earth.

Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, announced the teams at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California. “I’m very pleased to welcome our first 10 fully registered teams to the Google Lunar X PRIZE. Only 6 months after the announcement of this competition, the response has been incredible – we’ve received over 560 expressions of interest from more than 53 nations. By comparison, at the 6 month point of the Ansari X PRIZE we had only 2 teams registered. I think we’re going to see an exciting and very competitive race to the Moon, highlighted by some very creative designs unlike anything we’ve seen come out of the government space programs. Many of these teams represent some of the most creative and entrepreneurial minds in space exploration today. I wish them all the very best of luck. I can’t wait to join with Google in paying the winner,” said Diamandis.

"We are excited that ten teams from around the world have taken up the challenge of the Google Lunar X PRIZE," said Megan Smith, Google's Vice President for New Business Development. "We look forward to the exciting achievements and scientific advancements that will result from the efforts of these teams as they participate in the next great space race."

The ten teams are:

Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA): Based in Valcea, Romania and led by Dumitru Popescu, ARCA was also a contender in the Ansari X PRIZE. Two of ARCA’s most innovative projects to date have been the Demonstrator 2B rocket and Stabilo, a two-stage manned suborbital air-launched vehicle. The craft they plan to enter in the Google Lunar X PRIZE will be called the “European Lunar Explorer.”

Astrobotic: Team Astrobotic, led by Dr. William “Red” Whittaker, was formed to coordinate the efforts of Carnegie Mellon University, Raytheon Company and additional institutions. One of Carnegie Mellon’s specialties is autonomous navigation through stereo vision and other technologies. This enables Carnegie Mellon’s robots to automatically avoid obstacles and select their own route across unmapped terrain. Astrobotic will compete for the prize using their “Artemis Lander” and “Red Rover.”

Chandah: Chandah, meaning “Moon” in Sanskrit, was founded by Adil Jafry, an energy industry entrepreneur. He is now chairman and CEO of Tara, the largest independent retail electricity provider in Texas. Jafry’s goal is to catalyze commercialization of space, and bring advances in space travel, tourism, sciences, and technology to the general public at large. Team Chandah’s spacecraft will be named “Shehrezade.”

FREDNET: Headed by Fred J. Bourgeois III, this multi-national team is comprised of systems, software, and hardware developers who serve as the leaders and overall coordinators of an international group of Open Source developers, engineers, and scientists. Their goal is to bring the same successful approach used in developing major software systems (such as the Internet, and Linux) to bear on the problems associated with Space Exploration and Research.

LunaTrex: Led by Pete Bitar, LunaTrex is comprised of several individuals, companies, and universities from all over the United States, some of whom were also competitors for the Ansari X PRIZE. Each team member brings their own history to the mix: rocket science, high-altitude near-space R&D, defense directed-energy technology, aviation design and development, robotics, trajectories, and non-conventional propulsion expertise. The name of their competing craft will be “Tumbleweed.”

Micro-Space: Helmed by Richard Speck and based in Colorado, Micro-Space, Inc. has a 31-year history of producing world class, high tech products. Since focusing on the development of spaceflight systems, they have flown 17 innovative, bipropellant liquid fuel rockets, three near-hover rockets with vectored thrust guidance, scores of flights with telemetry and radio tracking, and several innovative life support systems. Micro-Space has been a competitor in the Ansari X PRIZE as well as the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. Their “Human Lunar Lander” will compete for Google Lunar X PRIZE.

Odyssey Moon: The first team to register for the competition, Odyssey Moon is a private commercial lunar enterprise headquartered in the Isle of Man and founded by Dr. Robert Richards. Odyssey Moon’s business plans are actively in development for a series of missions to the Moon during the International Lunar Decade in support of science, exploration and commerce. Their Google Lunar X PRIZE craft is titled “MoonOne (M-1).”

Quantum3: A U.S.-based team, Quantum3 is led by Paul Carliner, a senior executive in the aerospace industry. They propose to field a small spacecraft launched from an East Coast range using launch-coast-burn trajectory for a propulsive soft landing on the surface of the Moon at the Sea of Tranquility. Quantum3 is taking a partnership approach to the mission, utilizing the unique capabilities of the private sector and academic communities. Their craft will be called “Moondancer.”

Southern California Selene Group: According to team leader Harold Rosen, the approach taken by the Santa Monica Selene Group can be succinctly summarized as “an elegantly simple design that is relatively inexpensive to implement.” The architecture for their “Spirit of Southern California” spacecraft will combine the control and communication systems used in some of the earliest communications satellites with the latest in electronic and sensor technology.

Team Italia: Based in Italy and led by Prof. Amalia Ercoli-Finzi, Team Italia is a collaboration between several universities. The team is currently running a prototype of its system at Politecnico di Milano. The architecture of the robotic system is under study: a single big rover or a colony of many robots, light and mobile, with many legs and wheels, able to be compacted in the lander and distributed quickly on the Moon's surface with cameras and sensory support.

The X PRIZE Foundation has also announced that Space Florida will be a new preferred partner and the first preferred launch site for the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE competition. Each preferred partner offers additional prizes or strategic services at a discounted rate to all competition teams. As the first preferred launch site, Space Florida will award an additional prize of $2 million to the Grand Prize winner of the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition, provided the winner launched the winning flight from the State of Florida and upon confirmation that the winner has complied with all competition rules. Space Florida was created by the Florida Legislature to sustain Florida's position as the global leader in space exploration and commerce, and is the principal organization charged with promoting and developing Florida's aerospace industry.

ABOUT THE GOOGLE LUNAR X PRIZE
The $30 million prize purse is segmented into a $20 million Grand Prize, a $5 million Second Prize and $5 million in bonus prizes. To win the Grand Prize, a team must successfully soft land a privately funded spacecraft on the Moon, rove on the lunar surface for a minimum of 500 meters, and transmit a specific set of video, images and data back to the Earth. The Grand Prize is $20 million until December 31st 2012; thereafter it will drop to $15 million until December 31st 2014 at which point the competition will be terminated unless extended by Google and the X PRIZE Foundation. For more information about the Google Lunar X PRIZE, please visit www.googlelunarxprize.org.

ABOUT THE X PRIZE FOUNDATION
The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational nonprofit prize institute whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. On October 4, 2004, the X PRIZE Foundation captured world headlines when Mojave Aerospace Ventures, led by legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, built and flew the world’s first private vehicle to space twice in two weeks to win the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE. The X PRIZE Foundation has since launched the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE and the $10 million Archon X PRIZE for Genomics, and will continue to offer new prizes for breakthroughs in the areas of life improvement, exploration, equity of opportunity and sustainability. The Foundation is widely recognized as the leading model for fostering innovation through competition. For more information, please visit www.xprize.org or email email us.

ABOUT GOOGLE, INC.
Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.
Google is a trademark of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.

Allen Telescope Array Begins Scientific Observations

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:39:11 GMT

Allen Telescope Array Begins Scientific Observations

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen joins UC Berkeley and the SETI Institute to launch the next phase of astronomical research using the Allen Telescope Array, an innovative telescope for radio astronomy

Hat Creek, Calif. – Oct. 11, 2007 – Today, the University of California, Berkeley and the SETI Institute announced that the first 42 radio dishes of the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) are activated and collecting scientific data from the far reaches of the universe. This is the first phase of a planned 350 radio dishes that will advance the capabilities of radio astronomy research. Paul G. Allen, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist whose foundation donated seed money that started the project in 2001, joined representatives of UC Berkeley and the SETI Institute to launch the array.

“This is a great day for the science of radio astronomy and the study of the cosmos,” said Leo Blitz, UC Berkeley professor of astronomy and director of the university’s Radio Astronomy Laboratory, which is building the ATA with the SETI Institute. “Thanks to a unique intersection between the best in science, advanced, innovative technology and bold philanthropy, many secrets of the universe are a little closer to being revealed.”

"This project represents a potential breakthrough in building large arrays of radio telescopes that are extremely cost effective,” said Paul G. Allen, primary funder of the ATA. “As now deployed and with plenty of room for growth in the future, the telescope can fulfill a multitude of uses, including broad radio sky surveys and the search for evidence of extraterrestrial technology. I’m pleased to be able to contribute to such an important advancement and help build on the work this new telescope will do in the future. My hat is off to the team that worked so hard these last seven years to accomplish this significant milestone.”

Every object in space emits radio waves that can be collected and studied. From observation of these signals, radio astronomers can create a picture of astronomical bodies and events at great distances, revealing detail not discernable by telescopes operating at other wavelengths. The ATA will acquire data in a new way, imaging a large piece of the sky at once. What sets the ATA apart from earlier radio telescopes is its ability to collect and, analyze more information about celestial objects, and do this simultaneously for several projects. In addition, observational surveys can be made with greater speed than any previous or existing radio device.

“For SETI, the ATA’s technical capabilities exponentially increase our ability to search for intelligent signals, and may lead to the discovery of thinking beings elsewhere in the universe,” said astronomer Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. “It is the first major telescope in the world built specifically for undertaking a search for extraterrestrial intelligence.”

The ATA opens the doors to a new era of scientific progress. The telescope’s potential discoveries include a better understanding of exploding stars (supernovas), black holes, and new, exotic astronomical objects that are predicted but not yet observed. It will also provide expanded search capabilities to determine if intelligent civilizations have evolved around other stars. The ATA is the first panchromatic, wide-angle, snapshot, radio camera ever built. It is the most effective tool to create radio images of a vast area of the sky ever placed in the hands of researchers.

Located in an arid valley near the town of Hat Creek, just north of Lassen Volcanic National Park in northern California, the new array is already collecting important data. The first test images, released today from data gathered by the 42 ATA telescopes, include a radio map of the nearby Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33).

Beyond its speed and ability to both garner and analyze data, the ATA is also the first centimeter wavelength radio telescope with the ability to multi-task. While making innovative observations for radio astronomy, it can simultaneously interrogate solar-type stars for artificially produced signals that would reveal the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

This new capability increases many-fold the time astronomers can devote to large-scale surveys of the stars, as well as expanding the radio frequency band over which they can search. For SETI, in particular, this means that over the next two-dozen-years, the ATA will get a thousand times more data than has been accumulated in the past 45 years.

The ATA uses mass-produced, 20-foot diameter radio dishes and commercial telecommunications technologies combined with an innovative receiver design, and state-of-the-art digital signal processing technology. Working together, these small dishes create a telescope with a wide field of view ideally suited to rapidly surveying the sky. The layout of the 42 dishes was created by a computer model and is optimized to provide high quality radio imagery of the sky. The ATA can also filter out noise from man-made interference that in many radio telescopes would render much of the data unusable.The array can be easily upgraded as new advances in computer or telecommunications technology become available.

The total cost of the project to date, including research, development and construction costs for the array and the necessary radio astronomy and SETI signal detectors, is $50 million. The first phase of this project was funded through generous grants from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation totaling $25 million. UC Berkeley, the SETI Institute, the National Science Foundation, Xilinx, Nathan Myhrvold, Greg Papadopoulos, and other corporations and individual donors contributed additional funding. Both UC Berkeley and the SETI Institute are engaging in additional fundraising efforts to complete the full 350-dish array.

The full 350-dish array, when completed in approximately three years, will have unprecedented research capabilities. Capitalizing on constant advancements in computer technology, the ATA will be manufactured at a fraction of the cost of traditional instruments. The ATA team is prepared to install more dishes as additional funding is secured.

About the SETI Institute
The not-for-profit SETI Institute (www.seti.org) founded in 1984, conducts a broad range of astrobiology research. Institute projects include the world's most comprehensive work in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and a wide variety of research and education programs related to the search for life beyond Earth. The Institute employs over 90 scientists, in a variety of fields, including all science and technology aspects of astronomy and the planetary sciences, chemical evolution, the origin of life, and biological evolution. Among its staff and Board, the Institute counts two Nobel Prize winners.

About the Radio Astronomy Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley
Founded in 1958, UC Berkeley's Radio Astronomy Laboratory (RAL) (http://ral.berkeley.edu) was established to foster research in radio astronomy, a discipline that naturally extends beyond the borders of traditional academic departments. The main activity of the RAL has been to build and maintain a radio astronomy observatory at Hat Creek, near Mt. Lassen, supported by on-campus laboratory facilities. Home to radio telescope arrays for more than 25 years, the Hat Creek Observatory supports the scientific research of Berkeley scientists and graduate students as well as visiting astronomers from around the world who come to study the structure and evolution of the solar system, the Milky Way, other distant galaxies, and the Universe through the techniques of radio astronomy.

Media Contact

Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley, (510) 643-6998, rsanders@berkeley.edu
Seth Shostak, SETI Institute: (650) 960-4530, seth@seti.org
Aaron Blank, for the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, (206) 343-1543, aaronblank@feareygroup.com