L.A. hobbyists seek $1.5 million prize in NASA Mars robot challenge

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Photos: Topanga Man Builds Robot To Compete For $1.5 Million NASA Prize

LOS ANGELES -- When NASA takes the next big step in Mars exploration - retrieving a rock sample and bringing it safely back to Earth - it might have to thank a few dedicated hobbyists who are doing the hardscrabble work to develop a robot that can drive itself.

Fourteen teams, some of them just lone builders working in their spare time, are competing in the NASA Sample Return Robot Challenge, now in its second year, with a $1.5 million prize at stake.

Each team is working on an autonomous robot that can recognize objects in a grassy field and go pick them up, without relying on human control or Earth-based technology such as GPS.

No one really expects the teams to succeed, at least not yet.

"We did set the bar very high," said Sam Ortega, who oversees the competition from Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

The robot builders will gather June 5 at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, and are unlikely to get past the first of two stages. That's if the robots meet some strict guidelines, such as an 80-kilogram maximum weight. Last year, only one team even managed to reach the first stage.

NASA is seeking

"They're trying to be as resourceful as possible, and they're trying to be as ingenious as possible," Ortega said.

There's one team from Estonia, and the rest are U.S.-based, three come from the Los Angeles area.

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L.A. hobbyists seek $1.5 million prize in NASA Mars robot challenge

NASA Records an Explosion on the Moon So Bright You Could Have Seen It With Your Bare Eyes

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Since 2005, a team at NASA has been monitoring meteoroid explosions on the surface of the moon. In March, they announced yesterday, they observed an explosion so bright it would have been visible from Earth without a telescope. "For about one second," NASA said in a statement, "the impact site was glowing like a 4th magnitude star." It was nearly ten times as bright as any other previously recorded impact.

Unlike our safely cocooned planet, the moon has no atmosphere to protect it, and meteoroids do not burn up as they approach the surface. Over the past eight years, NASA scientists have observed more than 300 impacts, some of which are mapped below, with the March strike denoted by the red square.

What does it mean for something to "explode" in an environment with no oxygen? What are you actually seeing in the video above? NASA explains:

Lunar meteors don't require oxygen or combustion to make themselves visible. They hit the ground with so much kinetic energy that even a pebble can make a crater several feet wide. The flash of light comes not from combustion but rather from the thermal glow of molten rock and hot vapors at the impact site.

In the case of this major explosion -- which occurred on March 17th, during a period of increased meteor activity in Earth's atmosphere as well -- the rock struck the lunar surface at a speed of 56,000 miles per hour. The next time NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is in the vicinity, it will have its sights set on the Mare Imbrium region where the explosion occurred, searching for a new crater that could be as many as 20 meters wide.

A false-color, frame-by-frame breakdown of the explosion (NASA)

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NASA Records an Explosion on the Moon So Bright You Could Have Seen It With Your Bare Eyes

US Spaceflight Ambitions Must Face Budget Reality, NASA Chief Says

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HOUSTON Charles Bolden, NASA's chief and a self-described dreamer, says there is a line between dreams and reality when it comes to what the space agency can do, especially in light of current budget constraints.

"I am the eternal optimist, but I am also a realist," the NASA administrator told reporters during a visit to the Johnson Space Center here on Thursday (May 16). "Every single thing that we have on our plate right now, an asteroid mission, Mars, those are all very realistic. We know conceptually how to do that. We don't have all the technological capability to do it yet."

Bolden, who was in Houston to address employees and briefly visit with Chris Hadfield and Tom Marshburn, who returned from the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday (May 13), spoke about the priorities set out for NASA in President Barack Obama's budget proposal for next year.

"[We have] three destinations: low Earth orbit the International Space Station right now we're handing that off to commercial entities; an asteroid by 2025; and Mars is the ultimate destination for humanity," said Bolden. "And nobody can go there if we don't go. If NASA does not lead, humanity is not going there and we're going to go there by the 2030s." [Obama Proposes NASA Budget For 2014 | Video]

But budget constraints, specifically the sequester currently affecting all federal agencies, may put some of those priorities into jeopardy of being delayed or canceled.

"If the President and the Congress are not able to solve the sequester issue, which is a 10 year problem, we're in trouble," Bolden said. "If we have to operate under sequester, in 2014, NASA's budget goes from the present $16.8 billion it will not go up to $17.7 [billion] it will go down another $800 million to about $16.1 [billion]. That's significantly below the level of spending that we have right now."

Bolden said that if NASA doesn't get out from under the sequester, he may have no other choice but to remove some of the priorities from the space agency's very full plate.

"If it goes down to that point... you could see us go to the White House, go to the Congress and say 'Okay, you all didn't solve the problem, we now have some of our priorities that are going to come off the plate,'" he said. "The only solution without destroying the agency will be to say, 'Okay, we're not going to do that priority.' That will upset a lot of people, but that's reality."

Finding another way

For now, Bolden has committed to working within the space agency's means.

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US Spaceflight Ambitions Must Face Budget Reality, NASA Chief Says