11/23/2010

Neptec wins contract to develop new lunar rover

This just in: The Canadian Space Agency has selected Neptec, a longtime QNX customer and NASA contractor, to develop the new Lunar Exploration Light Rover, or LELR.

According to Mike Kearns, Neptec's vice president of space exploration, "the innovative design of this new Canadian rover will facilitate surface transportation for payloads, cargo, and crew during moon exploration. It will also enable drilling and excavation, manipulator and tool integration, and vision and state-of-the-art communications systems."

Neptec is a familiar name in the QNX community. The company built two QNX-based solutions for the Space Shuttle and International Space Station: the Laser Camera System and the Advanced Space Vision System.

For photos and more details on the lunar rover story, check out the Ottawa Citizen article.
 

5 comments:

Mohammed Sameer said...

Posting on your site after a long time. Other than this Neptec rover do You know if QNX or microkernel OS being used in the Google Lunar X Prize and the Russian and Chinese space programs.

Paul N. Leroux said...

Hi Mohammed. I've never heard of QNX being used in these programs. It is used by the European Space Agency, however.

- Paul

Karsten Becker said...

To Mohammed, there is a very high chance that we (the Part-Time scientists Team) are going to use QNX in our Rover. This is why our latest development and testing rover R0 is having a BeagleBoard. Because it runs QNX so nicely! We presented this at the 27C3. Hopefully the presentation will be online soon.

Paul N. Leroux said...

Sounds good, Karsten! If you can, post a link here to your presentation once it's online; would like to see it.

Paul N. Leroux said...

Actually, Karsten, I would love to post an article on your use of QNX in this blog. It could take the form of a written interview, for example. Send an email to paull[at]qnx.com.

Cheers,

- Paul