NASA Regolith Excavation Challenge

Please note that this contest has nothing to do with Lunarpedia or Moon Society. Details are only posted here to foster debate on how to meet the challenge.

The Challenge

From NASA - Centennial Challenges Descriptions and Resources The Regolith Excavation Challenge promotes the development of new technologies to excavate lunar regolith. Excavation is a necessary first step towards lunar resource utilization, and the unique physical properties of lunar regolith make excavation a difficult technical challenge. Advances in lunar regolith extraction have the potential to contribute significantly to the nation's space exploration operations. From California Space Authority Teams competing in the 2007 Regolith Excavation Centennial Challenge will build autonomously operating systems to excavate lunar regolith and deliver it to a collector. This Challenge will be conducted in a "head-to-head" competition format. Teams will be challenged to excavate and deliver as much regolith as possible in 30 minutes. Each team's excavation system must be fully autonomous Systems will perform in a square sandbox filled with compressed lunar regolith simulant. Mass of the system cannot exceed 40 kilograms. 30 Watts of DC power will be provided to the system. Each system will have 30 minutes to excavate as much regolith as possible and deliver it to a fixed collector adjacent to the sandbox. The total purse of $250,000 will go to the winning teams excavating the most regolith above 150 kilograms.