Rover Prototype Press Conference Highlights Reel

On the 28th of August 2011, White Label Space held a press conference in Tokyo to present the team's lunar rover prototype. This video shows some of the highlights of the event.

The press conference was organized by White Label Space Japan LLC, the team's commercial branch in Japan.

Fire Control System

Safety comes first in rocketry, and that's why our partner the Swiss Propulsion Laboratory developed this custom fire control system to operate their rocket motor test bench from a remote and safe location.

The computer screen shows them telemetry from sensors on all the critical equipment allowing them to monitor the test results in real-time and, if necessary, make safety-critical decisions.

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Quadrotor GNC Testbed - Test 1

Dhanushka Liyanage, Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC) engineer for White Label Space, has constructed a quadrotor vehicle as a testbed for GNC algorithms that will be used on the lander for our Google Lunar X PRIZE mission.

This video shows a test with manual manipulations of the quadrotor thrust levels. Dhanushka is now working on the basic flight control algorithms to achieve sustained hovering.

Rover Release - Japan Press Conference Announced

The White Label Space Rover prototype will be officially presented to the media and specially invited guests during a press conference on Monday 29th August in Tokyo.

The White Label Space team members in Japan prepared this video to promote the event.

Short Firing Test of Development Motor

More progress from the White Label Space propulsion team - this video shows a short firing test of a development motor, a stepping stone towards the engine that will eventually power our lunar lander.

Cool Way to Inspire Future Rocket Scientists

Our partner the Austrian Space Forum (OeWF) found this cool way to spend a hot summer's day in Innsbruck - water rockets!

Hydrogen Peroxide vs Nitrous Oxide

For our GLXP lunar lander's main engine we have been closely investigating designs with two possible oxidizers - hydrogen peroxide and nitrous oxide.

First and foremost these propellants are non-toxic and thus are more desirable from the safety point of view compared to the toxic ones typically used for government financed lunar spacecraft. The additional safety coming from non-toxics reduces the development time and costs, making the development feasible for our small team which has only limited finances.

Secondly, both these propellants can be used in mono-propellant mode by passing them through a catalyst pack (here nitrous has the small disadvantage of requiring pre-heating for its catalyst pack). The specific impulse in monopropellant mode is not terrific so we have selected a bi-propellant system for the main lander engine, combing the oxidizer with a kerosene-type fuel. However, the monopropellant mode is quite useful for secondary thrusters for attitude control, which don't require high specific impulse, or for a deep throttling mode of the main engine that might be useful for the final touchdown when the lander's mass is low.

Both the oxidizers have a long heritage in both professional and amateur rocketry so there is lots of information available for guiding the design process. Indeed, we have already complete preliminary designs for engines of both types. However, there is one more factor that is very important for our thinking - the availability.

It turns out that there are virtually no suppliers of rocket grade hydrogen peroxide in the world, and those that do exist are notoriously unwilling to cooperate with small companies involved in rocket development. Some small rocketry groups using hydrogen peroxide choose to manufacture the propellant in-house, which is a relatively simple process but presents significant risks and requires dedicated facilities for production and storage, taking it beyond the reach of our team. Thus, for some time now we have been scouring the world for suppliers, and so far didn't succeed. (If anybody knows a supplier willing to cooperate with GLXP teams, please send us an email.)

Unlike hydrogen peroxide, the availability of nitrous oxide presents no difficulties. It is widely used across many industries, is cheap, and can be shipped almost anywhere when needed.

Another oxidizer option that is frequently discussed is liquid oxygen. This is non-toxic and relatively easy to handle as well as giving great performance. However, we rule out liquid oxygen due to the uncertainties in thermal conditions that will be encountered during out mission, which make it impossible to accurately and reliably predict the boil-off fraction. Also we consider the development of a space-qualified re-condensor system as not realistic given the timeframe and finances available.

As a result of the above considerations we have selected nitrous oxide for our first prototype rocket motor, which we plan to demonstrate in the fourth quarter of this year.

The main downsides of nitrous oxide are its requirement for pre-heated catalyst (if a monopropellant mode is used) and its vapor phase transition behavior, which give extra complication compared to hydrogen peroxide. For these reasons, we plan to keep the option open to go back to hydrogen peroxide later if the availability issue can be solved.

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Next up in our series of sample ads linked the Google Lunar X PRIZE, this ad looks at how our robotic lunar mission could be used to advertise a solar cells company.

Seeking Partners for QB50 CubeSat Mission

White Label Space is looking for partners to participate in a project to build a CubeSat for the QB50 Project.

QB50 is a European Commission project to create an international network of 50 CubeSats for multi-point, in-situ measurements in the lower thermosphere and re-entry.

The WLS QB50 CubeSat will be 2 units in size (i.e. 20 x 10 x 10 cm) and, aside from the primary payload for scientific measurements, will also include a small payload related to the team's Google Lunar X PRIZE mission. The payload has not been determined yet and the team is looking for ideas.

White Label Space is particularly interested in partnering with one or more universities that would like to host the integration facility. Other organizations or individuals with CubeSat experience are also very welcome to respond.

Please send an email to system@whitelabelspace.com if you would like to contribute to this exciting and challenging mission, or if you have a good idea for a payload.

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Team Summit Presentation

Andrew Barton and Takeshi Hakamada gave this presentation at the GLXP Team Summit earlier this week.

Kristhian Mason

Kristhian Mason is a member of the White Label Space video editing team.

Kristhian has worked as a professional graphics artist for 14 years, and is specialized in making layouts and retouching pictures.

He is the Creative Director for the Space Safety Magazine of the IAASS (International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety) and ISSF (Internatonal Space Safety Foundation), making the newsletters, flyers and magazine ads.

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Japanese in Space Article

Peter Brown has just published this article about White Label Space in his new blog called Japanese in Space.

The article includes comments about our activities in Japan by our chief rover designer, Professor Kazuya Yoshida, and by Takeshi Hakamada, the CEO of White Label Space Japan.

Our team leader Steve Allen also gave some insight on the overall challenges facing the team and what motivates the team members to perform.

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White Label Space at the White Board

This video shows lapse footage of a recent engineering meeting of our GLXP team... with some funny extras!

Sample Ad - White Label Electric Cars

We want sponsors to support our mission for the Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP), and what better sponsor than a maker of electric cars!

This ad, made by the White Label Space creative team, is a sample of how a fictitious automotive brand (we call it "White Label Electric Cars") might use our mission as part of an ad campaign.

White Label Space is Building a Rocket Engine!

This video is a sneak preview of some early testing that has started within the White Label Space team. Stay tuned in the months ahead for more videos and information...

Rio Tinto TV Documentary: Newton 14.05.2011 - Erobern Österreicher den Mars?

Last May, the Newton magazine released a TV documentary by Elisabeth Pfneisl and Erich Proell about the Rio Tinto 2011 Mars simulation mission, where White Label Space performed some tests on its Lunar Lander Mockup.

This news report (in German) covers the entire Mars Analog mission, including the ESA's Eurobot tests, the new Aouda.X spacesuit, and the rovers tests.

We need to clarify that when they introduce White Label Space in the report, they described us having won the Google Lunar X PRIZE, which is clearly a mistake. We were there to test our lander mock-up and omnidirectional camera, as well as to get feedback to support our future work.

Enjoy the journey through the Rio Tinto Mars Analog Mission 2011 with this video.

Human Interface for Rover Teleoperation

Audrey Lan Sun and Rachel Dompnier talk about their project to research and design a concept for the White Label Space lunar rover control center.

GEO Magazine Translation of WLS Article

By popular demand, this is an English translation of the recently published GEO magazine article covering White Label Space.

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TEAM WHITE LABEL SPACE

The moon doesn’t have advertising, according to this team from the Netherlands and Japan. Advertising brings money, which, in turn, will bring the rover to the moon. For now, they all hope it is affordable.

The debate is lively this evening in the meeting room of the firm AOES in Noordwijk. Seven men are sitting at the table, the youngest mid-30, the oldest in the early 60s. Engineers, technicians; the only banker around the table has difficulty in following the conversation.

AOES is a medium-sized aerospace company, and looking out the window the buildings of the European Space Agency ESA can be seen. The screen in the conference room shows images with formulae, calculations, tables. That’s Martin Lemmen’s part. He’s investigating heat analysis during the landing, as the lander descends from the orbit around the moon to the moon’s surface.

How can you avoid overheating by sunshine during the landing? When would be the best time for the landing?

“Morning, after 7am moon time”, says Lemmen. “That will enable sunshine to power the lander [by photovoltaic cells]”.

“I would prefer earlier” responds Andrew Barton, leading the discussions, “then we’d have more time up there for experiments”.

“That would work” answers Lemmen, “but makes it more complicated”.

White Label Space (WLS) has an international make-up. The team members in Holland work on the landing module. In Japan, at Tohoku University in Sendai – they survived undamaged after earthquakes and tsunamis – Professor Kazuya Yoshida, expert in space robotics, and his students are building the payload: the moon rover.

“There’s surely no one better in Japan for such an exercise” says Barton.

Barton is an Australian with a work permit in the Netherlands. He’s studied aerospace in Sydney, Tokyo and Strasbourg. He’s an engineer at AOES, in his mid-30s, with a close cropped beard. He’s one of the founders and the Chairman of WLS. At the very start, he arranged that the firm in which he is employed to become a WLS partner; in exchange for the welcome publicity, AOES has given him time off to work on the project.

“Such an adventure has always been my dream” says Barton. By that he means this sort of space mission in which it wasn’t necessary to spend decades in the planning phase in order to get the support of earthbound bureaucracies. This is a project that, in addition to technical capabilities, demands spontaneity and unconventional ideas – and that is spectacular enough not only to inspire the participants, but to keep them awake.

In total, approximately 25 persons are heavily involved in WLS, all on an unpaid basis, including Barton. But not everyone is contributing publicly. Several team members work in the space industry or at ESA.

“They are afraid of difficulties” reckons Barton.

Most of them are driven by similar motives as he is: in the end to be able to realise something by himself, to be creative without restrictions.

The creativity begins with the financing: the conceptual idea features in the name of the team. White Label Products are products with no brand markings.

Says Barton: “White Label Space offers its mission as a platform on which sponsors can display their advertising”.

Advertising on the lander. A firm’s logo, etched out by the rover in the dust of the moon. Pictures of that, in HD quality, beamed to the Earth and distributed a zillion-fold via YouTube. In addition to that, one or several other scientific experiments as paid accompanying loads. Anything that can be thought of, everything is possible. By themselves, Toyota, Deutsche Telekom and Panasonic, for example spent around 3.4 billion Euros in advertising in 2009. That’s about as much as the total budget for ESA in the same year.

“A hundredth of this sum would finance our project” Barton estimates. “The undertaking will be achievable with a few very big firms as advertising partners.”

At present, WLS doesn’t want to be too precise about the costs: the mission concept summary gives a figure of 30 million Euros as the upper bound. For the launcher, WLS has chosen the Indian rocket PSLV-XL in a narrow decision. That costs 18 million Euro and has no obvious problems. In fact it has already had one successful mission – in 2008, the PSLV-XL transported the Indian lunar probe “Chandrayaan-1”.

To develop the braking stage for the descent to the moon surface, WLS needs to buy expertise on the open market. According to calculations, the lander will separate from the entry vehicle 13.6 km about the dusty surface. From there on, the lander is responsible for a soft landing. WLS plans to build the necessary braking stage in-house.

And how far have they got with the development?

“Come with me” says Barton, “I’ll show you our mock-up, a full size model”.

The way leads out of the meeting room through the AOES foyer, on whose wall is displayed a large-magnification satellite picture of the Earth. Then on to a conference room, decorated with a meter-long tapestry of pictures of planets, the Milky Way and far galaxies on a totally black background. That’s a fitting backdrop for a moon lander.

The model of the lander consists of wood and cardboard, but looks realistic, wrapped in protective foil as is required for heat insulation in spacecraft, supported by three intricately constructed legs. The whole thing is scarcely 80 cm high. On the platform of the lander is a small vehicle that represents the rover, even if it doesn’t look like it.

Now you need a little imagination if you want to come to grips with the plan.

“On the landing vehicle we’ll install a camera” explains Barton. And in the body will be the electronics for transmission of images to the Earth. The necessary electric current will be provided by a large foldaway solar panel.

If everything goes as planned, the two landing ramps of the lander will be remotely deployed once the lander is on the moon. The rover will be loosened from its connection with the lander and will then roll onto the moon’s surface.

“Just as Lunokhod did for the Soviets” Barton comments.

For the construction material of the flight hardware, the team has secured an experienced partner. Scarcely a half hour distant from Noordwijk, in an industrial district on the outskirts of The Hague, is the firm Airborne International, led by Sandor Woldendorp. This is a firm with around 100 employees, specialising in carbon fibre reinforced materials, so-called composite materials. Out of this black material, the firm builds aeroplane components for Airbus, tubes for oil platforms, or the tethers for the giant solar panels of the Galileo satellites of ESA.

Woldendorp reaches in the shelves next to the wall and draws out a 50 cm length of composite ribbon.

“We bring the technology for the structure, which is needed by WLS” he says, “for the solar panels on the lander, for the ramps, perhaps also for the body of the landing module.”

And what will Airborne get in return? “If it works”, says the manager, “we’ll have a powerful PR effect: a landing on the moon.”

Who will win the race won’t be clear for a long time.

Andrew Barton says: “Technically, Astrobotic have their nose in front. But I believe our chances are not bad.”

Towards the end of the meeting in the AOES conference room, the men are discussing the design of the rover. Astrobotic’s rolling pyramid appears on the screen.

“What do you think?” asks someone in the group, “does this thing have better features than our design?” “I don’t think so” says another.

They will see.

By Jürgen Bischoff

Caption to picture:

Advertising on the Moon: “A spectacular platform on which sponsors can display their advertising.”

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Budget Comparison: Global Brands vs Space Agencies

Can advertising by global brands finance ambitious space exploration missions like our Google Lunar X PRIZE mission?

This chart compares the budgets of various space agencies with advertising budgets of global brands.

The global brands shown in the chart were selected from industries with the strongest opportunities for brand linkage advertising on our GLXP mission, namely: Automotive, Electronics Technology, Telecommunications, News & Entertainment and Finance.

Any of the companies listed in the chart could finance our complete mission with less than 10% of their annual advertising expenditure. More likely, our mission will be sponsored by a number of different brands, and development costs will be spread over a number of years.

Sources:

• Wikipedia Space Agencies Budgets
• Ad Age Global Marketers 2010

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Rover Prototype - Suspension Integrated on Body Frame

Nathan Britton at Tohoku University Space Robotics Lab has sent through these latest photos of the rover prototype. The suspension has now been integrated on the frame of the body.

The prototype is on course for its first driving demonstrations next month.

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