April 22, 2007
The Astronautics and Space Technology Division/Information Science Institute Joint Student Project called "LEAPFROG" was approached by the University Space Research Association (USRA) to explore fielding a team in the 2007 X-Prize Lunar Lander Challenge Competition. The X-Prize LLC is a major international competition where USC's student project team would have to go up against other industrial competitors at a professional level of skill and experience for a $1.5M prize. USC's project is developing a lunar prototype vehicle that can fly repeated times over the course of a single day in free flight to simulate a lunar descent and landing sequence. The vehicle has active onboard guidance, navigation and attitude control, and a propulsion engine. The ultimate goal of the project is to provide an actual flight platform for todays national lunar landing missions to test early prototypes of key landing subsystems through a similar profile, and in similar surface and lighting conditions that are experienced on the moon, on a low cost flight platform.
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