Carnegie Mellon/Raytheon team planning lunar robot rover mission to the Apollo 11 landing site while in pursuit of the $20 Million dollar Google Lunar X Prize contest. There are 16 other teams in the running for the Google Lunar X Prize. The winning team has to be able to launch a rocket and payload to the moon. Land there. Then have it move at least 1,640 feet (i.e. 500 meters) and then beam back to earth high definition views.
Articles from Space.com from last October(October 30, 2009) and today (April 29, 2009) about the "Red Rover" planned mission to the moon and in the process, it will photograph the Apollo 11 landing site with HD cameras.
"Red Rover" takes it's name from Mr. Red Whittaker who is a Carnegie Mellon University roboticist who led his team to victory in the DARPA 2007 Grand Challenge. The main mission for Red Rover for scouting and prospecting, and mining. All the sorts of things that are needed for human return to the moon.
From the latest Space.com article, reporter Jeremy Hsu states that Raytheon and other partner institutions have already poured over $3 million into the project.
Image is from the lunar rover webpage.
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Ref. Red Rover ( http://www.lunarrover.org/).
Space.com from October 30, 2008 & April 29, 2009. (http://www.space.com/news/081030-astrobotic-lunar-exploration.html) & (http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/090428-tw-glxp-astrobotic.html).
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