Next Giant Leap Gets Fund for Lunar Rover Systems

In an interesting new development, one of the leading contestants to win the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize, Next Giant Leap LLC (NGL), announces that it has just received a $1 million funding boost from Draper Laboratory for the development of some critical systems that will go on its rovers.

NGL is one of the best bets in the X Prize for reaching the surface of the Moon, and for making it accessible for commercial applications. The company is made up of aerospace engineers working in collaboration with leading aerospace firms.

The main focus that the corporation has, in addition to winning the Google-sponsored prize, is to develop integrated launch systems that would be capable of delivering small-scale payloads to the Moon for paying customers.

Sierra Nevada Corporation is providing lead systems integration solutions for NGL, whereas the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is the main academic partner of the team.

The $30-million X Prize is a tremendously effective test space for their new technologies, as one of the requests teams have to fulfill to be declared winners is to create a rover that could drive for up to 500 meters away from its original landing site.

Draper Laboratory's recent announcement unlocks new opportunities for the collaboration, since the $1 million will be used to fund the design and development of a guidance, navigation and control (GN&C) system testbed for use on the rover.

“A critical component of any lunar landing mission is the GN&C. In addition to landing, we are developing a system that can propulsively hop, and this provides great flexibility to perform regional exploration of the lunar surface,” Draper Space Systems Director Seamus Tuohy says.

“I'm thrilled by the commitment to the NGL mission shown by Draper's team. Their funding ensures that this critical mission component will be ready to fly on schedule,” explains the founder of NGL, Michael Joyce.

Officials at the company say that Draper Laboratory is one of the most experienced and also independent research organizations, which has been involved with developing space-related technologies since the dawn of the Space Age.

The company works directly with US government agencies, including NASA, the US Air Force, the US Navy, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and others, SpaceRef reports.