Thursday, August 7, 2008

Denver Team Aims For Lunar Landing

A Denver-based team is part of an upcoming competition to simulate a landing on the moon, the nonprofit behind the competition revealed this week. According to the X PRIZE Foundation, Paragon Labs, headquartered in Denver, is one of ten teams which will be competing in the upcoming 2008 Lunar Lander Challenge. The X PRIZE foundation said that the challenge will award $2M to the team which can simulate a trip between the moon's surface and lunar orbit. The X PRIZE Foundation said that Paragon Labs was founded by Kevin Sagis, who has previously worked at Lockheed Martin supplying various NASA centers. The X PRIZE Foundation is the group which was behind the Ansari X PRIZE, which successfully challenged teams to create a suborbital launch vehicle. This year's event, the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, is also funded by the State of New Mexico and the New Mexico Spaceport Authority.