Washington D.C. – November 5, 2009 - Science and Technology Committee Ranking Member Ralph Hall (R-TX) today recognized Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwall, Texas and Masten Space Systems of Mojave, California for winning the Lunar Lander Challenge. Major General Charles F. Bolden, Jr. (USMC-Ret), Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was on hand to award a total of $1.65 million in prizes to the two winning companies.
“Prize money is an efficient and effective incentive,” Ranking Member Hall noted. “Prizes have been awarded for many smart and creative solutions to difficult technical problems and today I’m especially proud that one of the winning teams is from my own hometown of Rockwall, Texas. I’d like to congratulate all the teams today who have worked so hard to accomplish these challenging goals. Through their innovation and creativity they have provided a valuable contribution to NASA and our space goals.”
The Lunar Lander Challenge is a $2 million prize contest set up through NASA, the X-Prize Foundation, and Northrop Grumman, which is intended to accelerate the development of commercial technologies leading to lunar landers that can ferry payloads or humans from lunar orbit to the lunar surface. Armadillo was one of four teams in pursuit of the Lunar Lander Challenge prizes and was the first team to qualify for the level 2 prize with successful flights at Caddo Mills Airport on September 12, 2009.
In order to win the Lunar Lander Challenge, the teams had to build and fly a rocket-powered lander that takes off vertically, then travels horizontally and lands accurately at another spot. They then repeat the process, all within a two-hour-and-fifteen-minute time period.
“The idea of offering prize competitions for successfully achieving a particular breakthrough is not new, but it is a very creative approach,” Hall added. “Since NASA first proposed the use of innovation prizes to encourage competition, our Science and Technology Committee has supported the concept. Each team will take a different approach to solving the problem, and this diversity usually helps to find the best solution.”
In the NASA Authorization Act of 2005, Congress authorized up to $10 million in prize money to encourage innovative solutions to difficult problems that NASA needed to solve. Congress appropriated $4 million for NASA’s Centennial Challenges Program.