A remotely-controlled car race will now be held on the Moon in 2021, reports New Atlas. Moon Mark, a multimedia and education content company in collaboration with Intuitive Machines, the global leader in commercial space and airborne systems are pulling in some extraordinary resources to plan the race. The two racecars will be partially designed by high school kids, and McLaren P1 designer Frank Stephenson.
The racecars are going to be designed by six teams of high school kids from across America and the top two teams “will win a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build and race two vehicles on the Moon.”
Competitors will then race their rovers remotely, navigating through harsh terrain, racing around a sphere of cameras, which will capture every aspect.
The teams will have access to “near real-time visuals, telemetry, and command, and control” of the racecars.
Each car will weigh around 5.5 pounds and the “deployment mechanism” used to deposit them on the lunar surface will weigh a further 6.6 pounds.
The combined weight of 17.6 pounds makes the delivery quite expensive; Astrobotic, a lunar logistics company quoted a price of around US$544,000 per pound to carry it in one of its Peregrine lander modules.
However, the Moon Mark racecars will not be traveling with Astrobotic but instead will be carried in a Nova-C lander made by Intuitive Machines, which will be sent spaceward on the top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in October 2021.
The thrilling race will take place around the sandy dunes of Oceanus Procellarum, a huge plain near the western edge of the near side of the Moon.
Source: Express Tribune
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