Carnegie Mellon Astrobotic Red Rover

Carnegie Mellon Astrobotic Red Rover Courtesy Carnegie Mellon

To win the $20-million Google Lunar X Prize, a team must build a rover, land it on the moon, and send footage back to Earth. Team Astrobotic, headed by Carnegie Mellon professor William “Red” Whittaker, took the lead this year over 26 competitors when its solar-powered rover completed an unassisted 0.6-mile simulated lunar traverse at the university’s proving ground. The 173-pound rover is designed to take 3-D, high-definition images of the moon’s surface—and in February the team signed a deal with SpaceX to send it to the moon to do just that.