Man-made vehicles are nearing their possible arrival on to the Earth's moon as Moon Mark pushes partnership with Intuitive Machines to test cars on the moon, placing them on an actual car race while being fully controlled on a remote setup.
Moon Mark is an educational brand that focuses on multimedia and technology, such as their latest project, which would feature vehicles designed, created, and developed by high school students hailing from various places in the United States.
The project is supported by the Houston-based company Intuitive Machines, which focuses on and provides space products and services. Their partnership with Moon Mark would eventually open two firsts: companies' collaborative project will be the first racing competition outside the vicinities of the planet Earth; the second is for Intuitive Machines to be the first-ever private aerospace company to set their landing on the moon.
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Six teams of US high school students will compete for the prize of bringing their inventions on to the moon and will be used for the racing event taking place there. It will be comprised of drone or autonomous vehicle (AV) racing, space commercialization and entrepreneurship competition, and e-gaming contests, which will determine the two best possible candidates to take over the overall control, conceptualization, and design of the vehicles that will be sent to the moon.
In line with the winning teams, they will be guided by Frank Stephenson, a world-renown automobile designer widely recognized for his work on various designer car brands such as Ferrari, BMW, Fiat, Maserati, Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Mini, and McLaren where he did his latest work, the McLaren P1.
The course track creation will be designed and spearheaded by former racecar driver, circuit designer, and engineer Hermann Tike from Germany. He was known worldwide for his work in Formula One or F1 racing tracks for racing and motorcycle racing.
Intuitive Machines' Established Name
Moon Mark Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Founder Mary L. Hagy said that their partnership with the aerospace company in the form of Intuitive Machines could widen their reach and global engagement to younger audiences, who are deeply interested in aerospace subjects and could be explorers someday. She also mentioned that the established success of Intuitive Machines in the field and industries of aerospace, autonomous systems, and human space flight could help the competitors to "realize their dreams," along with their partner's company's leadership in space commercialization.
In 2019, Intuitive Machines received a mission call from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the agency supervising and governing all space-related activities and research being executed by private and public companies, organizations, and entities. Intuitive Machines was given the mission to launch their own developed Nova-C lunar lander in 2021. Its main purpose is to deliver and land small commercial payloads on to the moon's actual surface.
