AIME For The Moon....And Beyond

Highlands Intermediate School
08-0012
Introduction                Landing                Design                Future                Bibliography


     In a dark crater on the moon 238,900 miles from Earth, will venture AIME, an AUTONOMOUS ICEWATER MINING EXPLORER.  The young minds of the future here at Highlands Intermediate have designed a lunar rover, AIME, to attempt the Google Lunar X Prize Challenge along with the bonus challenges of roaming more than 5000 meters, imaging remnants of the Lunar Prospector, and finding water ice.
     In the Google Lunar X Prize Competition, the first private organization to successfully land a craft on the moon will receive $20 million.   The craft will need to roam at least 500m on the lunar surface and send “mooncasts” back to earth containing high resolution, 360o panoramic pictures from the moon’s surface, pictures of the rover on the moon’s surface, high definition(HD) videos of the rover’s near-real time journey, and data that was loaded onto the craft before launch.  In addition, $5 million in bonus prizes will be awarded for successfully completing additional tasks such as roving more than 5000 meters, imaging manmade artifacts, finding water ice or surviving a lunar night.[1]