Sending Mail & Personal Keepsakes to the Moon May be Possible Soon Because of a Rover Named Andy
There is a race to send your mail to space.
The first outer-space delivery firm is hoping to start a trend by giving astronomy lovers and the world the opportunity to send mail from Earth to the moon, according to ABC News.
The MoonMail idea, revealed this week, is coming out of Carnegie Mellon University and the university's technology branch to provide this new form of delivery service. From idea to development the venture has also become a competition.
The CMU and its technology branch Astrobotic Technology want to put a privately owned rover on Earth's moon that will mail personal keepsakes to it. The branch is serious and committed. Astrobotic has already leased a rocket to be built by a space exploration, technology and outer-space cargo shipping company, SpaceX, ABC reported. Astrobotic's potential mail-carrying rover is nicknamed Andy. It is a solar-powered, knee high, four-wheeled robot.
Astrobotic also has a website called moonmail.co and it is a site where people can sign up to send their keepsakes in tiny MoonMail packages to be delivered to the moon.
Representatives for Astrobotic are asking interested Earthlings to purchase a small capsule that can be filled with keepsakes such as wedding rings or pictures. They will be transported during the company's first lunar mission which could take place in the next two years, NBC News reported.
Astrobotic and SpaceX are working together for a competition. The space-age cargo shipping company, SpaceX, has already advertised the moon rocket lease for $61 million on its website. SpaceX is even offering a 10 percent discount for any other groups that are competing.
Who's running and organizing the bold lunar competition, you ask? It is the federal government and Google. The space cargo will be regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Department of Defense.
"Today marks the beginning of a new kind of participant on the moon: the individual," said John Thornton, the Astrobotic CEO. "MoonMail is a new offering allowing anyone in the world to purchase space on our lander and immortalize their important keepsake on the moon forever."
If Astrobotic's Andy does win, part of the terms of Google's Lunar XPrize is that the winning rover must travel about one-third of a mile on the moon's surface by the end of 2015. And, the device must be able to transmit video of its progress to Earth.
Sending your keepsakes to the moon might just be worth it. Astrobotic's capsules vary in sizes and prices. The company's smallest moon capsule is sized at 0.5 inches across or 1.3 centimeters, and it costs $460.00. A larger capsule–0.75 inches wide or 1.9 centimeters–sells at $820.00. And a 1 inch or 2.5 centimeter capsule costs $1,660.00. With the contest prize, Astrobotic is offering one free capsule.
The company is even asking people to submit their best ideas for what they would like sent to the moon. The deadline to send in the ideas is Dec. 23. As for the mail, Astrobotic will carefully screen all MoonMail items that are potentially harmful to the spacecraft and mission.
All Astrobotic has to do now is win. The winner will receive $30 million of the Google Lunar XPrize.
For all customers sending a package via MoonMail, there is no return address needed. The items that will be sent will remain in the capsule in a pod and attached to the rover.
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