Stage Set for Moon Dirt Digging Contest

From MSNBC.com: Space News:

Six teams from across the country are headed for a rumble in California on Saturday, where $250,000 in NASA prize money awaits the best robotic moon dirt diggers. The contest, NASA's 2007 Regolith Excavation Challenge, will pit the autonomous robots against one another to determine which can move the most mock lunar dirt — or regolith — in 30 minutes at the Santa Maria Fairpark in Santa Maria, California. "We've got a great group of teams," said Matt Everingham, special projects manager for the California Space Authority, a co-host for the competition. "They have a variety of configurations and a variety of construction styles...I can't wait to see them operating."

Read the whole article