Tuesday, December 16, 2008

San Francisco and Silicon Valley Events

As most of you probably know, a lot of prize-related announcements and presentations are happening in the same region over the course of a few days:

Human-Tended Suborbital Science Workshop - RLV News - Ken Davidian has posted on the Commercial Space Wiki his Tweeter notes (pdf)

from the workshop. Ken is the former head of NASA's Centennial Challenges program, and the workshop includes some Lunar Lander Challenge personalities.

Two new GLXP teams debut - RLV News

New teams join $30 million moon rover contest - MSNBC - This has some more details on the teams, and a links cool pictures of the teams' rocket car and "mobile phone on wheels".

EuroLuna, or European Lunar Exploration Association
EuroLuna Google Lunar X PRIZE page

Selene Team - As they say, they're not to be confused with the SELENE mission.
Selene Google Lunar X PRIZE page - They have a rocket car video posted already.

American Geophysical Union Kaguya Briefing - Lunar Networks - It's not about prizes, but the Lunar X PRIZE teams might be interested in this type of information being discussed nearby.

2008 AGU Medalists - The ceremony and banquet will be held Wednesday at the San Francisco Marriott. Here are the awards most obviously related to space:

Gerald J. Wasserburg
William Bowie Medal - For important contributions to earth and planetary sciences resulting from his developments in the field of radiogenic isotope geochemistry.


Robert L. Parker
Adam Fleming Medal - For his longstanding work in electromagnetic induction, resistivity sounding, and within the areas of seamount magnetism; statistical models of palaeosecular variation; numerical methods for potential field modeling applied to the crust and core; and rigorous theories for extremal inversions for magnetisation structure on Earth and on Mars.

H. Jay Melosh
Harry H. Hess Medal - For predictions, innovations, and contributions to our understanding of important phenomena in geophysics and planetary physics.


Charles C. Counselman III
Charles A. Whitten Medal - For development and use of systems to receive and combine Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite signals to determine positions on Earth’s surface of these


(Sorry, I put what I could get from the last sentence, but the actual awards PDF is cut off like that).