The Lunar Rover Named After Carl Sagan

This lunar rover is called ‘Sagan’, after the american astronomer Carl Sagan. It is part of Google’s X-Prize contest.

It is being built by team OmegaEnvoy.

If you didn’t know Google’s Lunar X-Prize is a $30 milion contest to land a privately funded robot on the moon.

Unfortunately, getting to the Moon hasn’t been very cost-effective—yet. And that’s where the Google Lunar XPRIZE comes in: $30 million in prizes designed to inspire pioneers to do robotic space transport on a budget. Teams from around the world are well on their way to accomplishing this  and ushering in a new era of space frontiers!

To win the grand prize ($20 million), private teams (with no more than 10% in government funding) must:

• Land a robot safely on the Moon
• Move 500 meters on, above, or below the Moon’s surface; and
• Send back HDTV Mooncasts for everyone to enjoy

….and this must all be completed before the December 31st, 2016 deadline! There are other prizes, too, for missions like surviving the lunar night and visiting an Apollo site.