The luxury car brand Audi has announced it will be "taking off for the Moon" by providing support to a team competing to win Google's Lunar XPRIZE to transport a rover to the surface of Earth's natural satellite, drive at least 500 metres and transmit high definition video back to Earth.
The $30 million Lunar XPRIZE, covered recently in WIRED, started with more than 25 teams and has now been whittled down to 16 from around the world including Brazil, Italy, Hungary, Japan, Israel, Malaysia, Canada, Chile, and the United States.
Audi will partner with one of those teams, Germany-based Part Time Scientists, and help to produce a four-wheel-drive Audi-branded 'Lunar Quattro' for delivery straight to the Moon. The current plan is to launch the rover in 2017 to the landing site of Apollo 17, the last manned mission to make it to the Moon. The launch would come one year after planned launches by Astrobotic and Hakuto, but the timeline is still aggressive.
The Part-Time Scientists team has a higher pedigree than its name suggests. It has existing partners in NVIDIA, Technical University of Berlin, the Austrian Space Forum (OeWF) and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), and counts 35 engineers in its ranks and three experts, including former Nasa employee Jack Crenshaw.
Audi said it will be able to provide experience with lightweight materials, electric mobility and piloted driving.
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