Registration for the 2008 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge is now closed. The Challenge will again be taking place at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico on October 24, 2008. The event, which is not being held as part of an X PRIZE Cup, will not be open to the public, but will be webcast for the world to watch. More details on how and where to watch the webcast will be available as we get closer to October.

The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge is designed to accelerate commercial technological developments supporting the birth of a new generation of Lunar Landers capable of ferrying payloads or humans back and forth between lunar orbit and the lunar surface. Such a vehicle would have direct application to NASA’s space exploration goals as well as the personal spaceflight industry, including the Google Lunar X PRIZE competitors. Additionally, the challenge will help industry develop the operational capacity to launch quick turnaround vertical take-off, vertical landing vehicles, which will be of significant use to many facets of the commercial launch procurement market. The official rules, which will be similar to last years, will be available online shortly.

The Competition is divided into two levels. Level 1 requires a rocket to take off from a designated launch area, rocket up to 150 feet (50 meters) altitude, then hover for 90 seconds while landing precisely on a landing pad 50 meters away. The flight must then be repeated in reverse—and both flights, along with all of the necessary preparation for each, must take place within a two and a half hour period.

The more difficult course, Level 2, requires the rocket to hover for twice as long before landing precisely on a simulated lunar surface, packed with craters and boulders to mimic actual lunar terrain. The hover times are calculated so that the Level 2 mission closely simulates the power needed to perform a real lunar mission.

In the 2007 competition, held as part of the X PRIZE Cup, there were nine competitors total. However, despite the best efforts of all of the teams, only one of them, Armadillo Aerospace, was ready to fly. They missed winning Level 1 by 7 seconds.

You can see a complete description of all of last year’s competitors on last year's site.