![]() The company pulled out of the competition in 2016, but its mission has continued to evolve. Roboticists at Carnegie Mellon University to compete for the Google Lunar X Prize, which challenged teams to put a robotic spacecraft on the moon. Eventually, rovers will help mine for minerals and water frozen deep in craters and at the poles. Once they’re safely on the surface, robots like Astrobotic’s will explore the moon’s geology, scout out sites for future lunar bases, and carry equipment and material destined for those bases, Horchler says. Horchler leads a team whose aim is ensuring those robotic vessels-including Astrobotic’s own Peregrine lander-can perform at least as well as Armstrong did.Īstrobotic’s precision-navigation technology will let both uncrewed and crewed landers touch down exactly where they should, so a future Armstrong won’t have to strong-arm her landing vessel’s controls. In the coming decades, human forays to the moon will rely heavily on robotic landers, rovers, and drones. This is the headquarters of space robotics company Astrobotic Technology. He’s sitting in a glass-walled conference room in a repurposed brick warehouse, part of Pittsburgh’s Robotics Row, a hub for tech startups. “If he hadn’t been there, who knows what would have happened?” saysĪndrew Horchler, throwing his hands up. Finally, at 150 meters, he leveled off and steered to a smooth spot with about 45 seconds of fuel to spare. Armstrong started looking for a better place to park. As the Eagle headed to the moon’s surface, Armstrong and his colleague Buzz Aldrin realized it would touch down well past the planned landing site and was heading straight for a field of boulders. ![]() In fact, the descent of the Apollo 11 lander was nerve-racking. The Eagle has landed,” he said calmly, as if he had just pulled into a parking lot.
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