After three years of hard labour, a group of robot designers has demonstrated that their machine packs the power to shift hundreds of kilograms of moon dust and won a $500,000 prize for their efforts. In NASA's third Regolith Excavation Challenge, robots competed to dig up over 150 kilograms of simulated lunar soil within 30 minutes. In previous years, no team has managed to shift enough material to qualify, but this year three teams hit the weight target. The Paul's Robotics team from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts won with its Moonraker robot (pictured), which scooped up 440 kilograms of simulated lunar soil. The rock-dust particles that cover the moon's surface are. on average, one-fifth the size of a grain of sand and have jagged edges.
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