NASA's 2009 Regolith Excavation Challenge - 09.10.15

The jagged edges of what's commonly referred to as lunar regolith, can create some serious issues when it comes to critical things for living on the moon, like keeping airlock seals tight or not ripping apart the lungs of astronauts. This stuff's not all bad. If we can find a way to mine and collect the regolith we can utilize it to help build our future lunar colonies. We can possibly use it to provide shielding from meteorites, thermal extremes, radiation, both natural and man-made, and the blast effects of rockets landing and taking off. Oh, and the material contains He-3 which could, you know, solve the world's energy crisis.

[frohickey]

Interesting stuff. I wonder what unforeseen effects of actual regolith material will manifest when the winning machine is finally used on the moon. Will they be able to test it on something that will mimic the characteristics of the real stuff?

[mrmaciejm]

Its amazing, they are building robots to work on the moon...

[TETOYVIENDO]

Hello, i want to know if NASA willl continue with contest like this one in the years to come... and where people from other countries will know about countest of NASA that have to use robot???

[TETOYVIENDO]

Hello, I want to know where people from other countries know about contest like this one... and if in the near future wiil be contest like this one or some contest with the use of robot in any NASA aplication???

[WKnndy]

He-3 because of Solar wind? Solar Wind Composition Spectrometer (SWICS) on Ulysses? Well, what I want to know now does the darkside of the moon have less? It probably differs at least.

[adammadammson]

Moon has helium of rare isitope 3? Why?
(Sorry if explanation was in video, my sound died!)

[candr]

@Buttmunch5000 No in the States here its month/day/year.