TubeRat Aerospace, Ocean Ridge Airport, Gualala, California

The Lunar Landing

On March 31, 2005, TubeRat Aerospace broke new ground in history. The first commercial lunar probe landed successfully.

The probe carried a dozen official "tokens" for the LunaCaching Prize. A purse of US$100 million will be given to the first registered team whose probe obtains and sends signals back from one of these cryptographic tokens, subject to confirmation by independent judges.

You can download a video of the Mission Control Center during the lunar descent and landing.

Download Video

lower quality (3MB) (320x240)
higher quality (10MB) (320x240)

(Requires WMV player: Windows Media Player or RealPlayer on Windows, Quicktime or VLC on Mac, MPlayer or Xine on Linux/BSD/Unix)

Photo at left: Inertial Telemetry operator Bret Anderson leads the cheers at Mission Control when TubeRat 1 lands on the moon.

Lunar surface image

Questions and Answers

Here are some answers to questions we have received.

Q: Why isn't the landing itself on the video?: A: The airbags that cushion the spacecraft during landing also obscure the camera. No more images were possible until the airbags were deflated.
Q: What happenned in the mission control? Did something go wrong?: A: Three airbags burst at different times during the landing. It briefly caused some excitement while operators checked if everything was still working.
Q: Who paid for this mission?: A: Thanks to Dr Lirpa Sloof and the Lirpa Sloof Foundation, without whose generous sponsorship the TubeRat 1 mission and LunaCaching Prize would not be possible.
Q: I just noticed what "Lirpa Sloof" spells backwards - is that a coincidence?: A: No, it isn't. See the credits.