A group of students sends a rover to the moon

US, Soviet Unionand Japan everyone has sent robots to the moon in the last 50 years. Now, a group of college students has joined in by building a shoebox-sized rover that they plan to launch in May, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

The lunar rover, called Iris, will be America’s first privately built robot to explore the moon’s surface, according to project website. But that’s not all—it’s also the first student-built rover, and the smallest and lightest yet. Around 300 students from Carnegie Mellon University all participated in the project.

“Hundreds of students poured thousands of hours into Iris. We’ve been working for years towards this mission, and the launch date on the calendar is an exciting step,” said Raewyn Duvall, program manager for Iris. CMU said.

The Iris Lunar Rover team did not return immediately It’s fortune request for comment.

Iris is small and weighs 2 kgs (4.4 lbs)—but the design is minimal. The rover will fly on a private rocket carrying 14 payloads to the moon, which includes Iris, projects for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as well as some people. The project involves about 300 students, who will also control and operate the Moonshot Mission Control, the control center for Iris based on CMU’s campus in Pittsburgh.

Iris will spend a total of 50 hours on the surface of the moon before it runs out of battery, after which it will leave the moon. It has two cameras that help it take pictures of dust on the moon’s surface.

Launch a university-led lunar mission

Going to space is not cheap. Some (wealthy) civilians paid $55 million each to fly to the space station in 2022. In the case of Iris, the project cost about $800,000 funded in part by CMU while the rest came from private donors and crowdsourced fundraisers.

Later this yearthe university plans to send another student-developed rover called MoonRanger, which is funded by NASA and will explore the south pole of the moon which is believed to contain ice formations. “If the ice is sufficiently concentrated, and if its water can be processed, water will become an essential resource for living and working on the moon,” says the MoonRanger website.

NASA launched a moon-orbiting rocket last year for the first time in decades. Many of their other projects are focused on exploring Mars.

The space race has sparked turf wars between the world’s major powers for decades now. But in recent years, private players have taken an active part in the development of space missions. It’s Elon Musk SpaceX sent astronauts into space before, with NASA’s blessing. First it sent four crew members November 2020. Earlier this month, SpaceX sent its seventh group to the International Space Station for NASA. The company will also help NASA launch a rocket in 2025 as part of the Artemis mission.

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