傳說月球上有玉兔打餅?? 未來的月球上將會有”企鵝”在跳…… *摳摳臉*

(from ninemsn.com.au)
Space Penguin could hop around moon
20:36 AEST Wed Aug 31 2005

A robotic Lunar Penguin explorer could be hopping around on the moon by 2009, maker Raytheon Co said as it unveiled the concept lander at an aerospace conference.

The unmanned lunar device, in development for two years, is a metre tall and weighs approximately 104 kg “hops” by reigniting small propulsion engines.

The Penguin, unveiled at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space 2005 Conference, can make a single jump of about 1 km and could be adapted to make additional jumps, possibly over greater distances.

US President George W Bush last year refocused the space program on sending people to the moon, Mars and beyond.

Raytheon said the Penguin could be a robotic precursor to future manned space missions and was being proposed to NASA.

While still in the concept stage, the explorer could be launched as early as 2009, said Karleen Seybold, a senior systems engineer for Raytheon, based in the Waltham, Mass.

The Lunar Penguin, originally intended to land on the South Pole of the moon to search for ice, is based on tactical weapons technologies, which should make it much more affordable, Raytheon said, without disclosing a price.

The lander sits on four legs, much like a small version of the original landers that brought astronauts to the moon. The squat, compact unit has a few tiny jump boosters protruding below and on its sides and looks nothing like an actual penguin.

The Penguin uses rocket engines from ground-based missile defence systems and the guidance system of a Tomahawk cruise missile.

“Since we could set it down in such a precise location, the Penguin could be the delivery vehicle for the science community,” said Seybold said.

Raytheon is a major military defence technology company but has only a small share of NASA contracts.

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Robotic space penguin to hop across the Moon
18:20 31 August 2005
(NewScientist.com news service)
Will Knight

The first lunar colonists may not be a humans but compact robots capable of jumping more than a kilometre in a single bound.

Engineers at US defence contractor Raytheon, in Massachusetts, have developed a robot, dubbed the Lunar Penguin, that could one day bounce across perilous craters and imposing mountains on the Moon’s craggy surface using a set of compact rocket boosters.

US president George W Bush has made returning to the Moon, and later reaching Mars, a crucial part of his vision for future US space exploration. But, in order for humans to make the Moon a second home, robotic scouts will need to search for safe landing spots and useful minerals for colonists to mine.

“Since we could set it down in such a precise location, the Penguin could be the delivery vehicle for the science community,” Raytheon engineer Karleen Seybold, who is leading the Penguin project, told Reuters.

Jumping craters
The robot, in fact, bears no physical resemblance to a real penguin, but looks like a simple, squat, four-legged lunar lander. It is just under 1 metre tall and weighs 104 kilograms.

The design borrows technology from Raytheon’s missile systems - the rockets come from a ground-based missile defence system and the guidance system is taken from a Tomahawk cruise missile. Although Raytheon has yet to receive an order to develop the Lunar Penguin further, Seybold says the bot could feasibly be launched as soon as 2009.

“The hopping penguin is an interesting concept,” says Max Meerman, a researcher at UK space company Surrey Satellites. “Jumping a mile means that crater edges, like the ones that cause problems for the Mars rovers, are not a big issue.”

Difficult landing
But Meerman adds that leaping such distances across the surface of the Moon could subject any instruments aboard the robot to severe stress. “Landing on the Moon is notoriously difficult,” he says. “Much more so than on Mars, so doing it multiple times will be a big engineering challenge.”

The Lunar Penguin was publicly demonstrated for the first time on Tuesday at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ 2005 SPACE Conference and Exhibition in California, US.

The event, which takes place between 30 August and 1 September, provides a showcase for many new technologies, from supercharged jet engines to giant hot air balloons.

Leaps and bounds
For the Lunar Penguin to be a viable Moon probe, some of the prototype’s features would need to be redesigned. For example, the guidance system would need to be reconfigured for navigation on the Moon rather than on Earth. It currently uses a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver, which would not work on the surface of the Moon, as it uses Earth-orbiting satellites.

Returning to the Moon is unlikely to be straightforward process, says Ian Wright, a researcher at the UK’s Open University and one of the team behind the failed Beagle 2 Mars mission. Wright notes that the last human mission took place more than 30 years ago. But to reach out to the stars, he says scientists will need to try out novel concepts. “The robotic penguin sounds like an excellent opportunity to help us do this,” he told New Scientist.

Meerman says the Lunar Penguin’s unique approach to lunar locomotion could prove a useful way of exploring the Moon’s hostile landscape. “If it’s successful, perhaps we could find astronauts on the next manned Moon mission using the same system to jump over hills,” he says.