Hi and welcome to the Wonders of the Universe!
Today, we'll be watching an interview, I had with Tibor from Puli Space Technologies,
about how and what to smell on the Moon?
A link to their website is in the description. Go, check them out after the interview for further information!
And if you can support them with some money, their development is extremely interesting.
So without further ado, here's what we talked about.
-Good morning! -Good morning! -Thank you for making this interview with me!
-That's great for us, for my team and for me as well.
-So, um, your company is named "puli". Can you tell us a little bit about your company and what you do? -Yeah,
"puli" is actually an ancient Hungarian
Dog breed. So a shepherd boxer so
and we choose the name ten years ago because we wanted to have something which is
unique, uh shows that it is Hungarian and people can spell it out even in the US or somewhere else and probably they
they even know what a puli is, and actually puli is a very cheerful and clever dog and we think
we can be also in a technical and space related business cheerful and hopefully clever as well. So
Puli Space is aiming at the Moon, actually,
So we - I founded the company 10 years ago just to participate
in the Google Lunar X Prize. The Google Lunar X Prize
short in GLXP was the largest so-called incentive prize
with about 30 million dollars prize money, uh all together. So and the goal was
to build a craft send it to the Moon and this craft should should go around 500 meters and send back
images and the videos. That means there's an exploration rover in
in under harsh conditions, and actually the main,
the real goal of this competition was
To show that private financing is able to set up such
attempts and it can be done, cheaper in that way and it was a kind of forerunner
for
many things what are happening right now. Puli was,
we were never aiming actually at building a lander because we know that our
our resources our,
our position in Hungary wasn't, will not be enough for that. So we just decided
to work on the mobility, on a planetary mobility system, actually
which is a rover. And our Puli: we have built several prototypes
and we tested also them
in so-called analog tests.
We are working further on the rover. Hopefully we'll have
a taxi - we call it a taxi -
just we have to go somehow to the Moon and we have also a contract with one of our
past GLXP teams or competitors. This is Astrobotic, the name I mentioned earlier.
Astrobotic is,
are good friends for us and we are working closely with them.
-So when are you planning to send your Puli to the Moon over?
-I don't know at the moment, but we have two other options to send something to the Moon and
I will start with the most probable: so we will be on the first flight of Astrobotic on the Perigrine. Perigrine is the name the
lander, and this will be more a cultural project. So we have,
we call it a space-time plaque.
So we would like to send about five million characters engraved in an aluminium plaque to be able to read with a ten times
magnifier, so
actually, you don't need any electronic device [to read it]. And the second thing what we
hope to send to the Moon earlier than a complete rover:
we participated
this spring in a another campaign and another challenge. It was called a "Honey I shrunk the NASA Payload".
Yeah, some people may remember the movie. :)
So the challenge was actually: NASA wanted to have ideas and the proposals for little and lightweight measurement
systems to search for resources on the Moon. And
we won the first prize and the Lunar
Resources category with our Puli Lunar Water Snooper. So puli is a dog, we are
snooping for
water actually, and this is a very, really very simple, very lightweight
system using actually CMOS camera sensors with special coating
and
we can use the measurements
provided by these
sensors of neutrons, using these different coatings, special coatings on the sensors, we can just measure the different energy
sector say how much
hydrogen is is in the regolite. So actually we can see
what is the water quantity, the water ice content, probably in that regolite, and water is one of the holy grails
people are looking at, because
hydrogen
and oxygen is water, and if we can just split the water into hydrogen and oxygen we have not only
Water for possible astronauts
and oxygen for breathing but we have also rocket fuel, actually. And this is one of the big things what people
think
we should
achieve on the Moon
If you don't have to take all the rocket fuel with us,
then it will be much much-much easier to fly
back and forth to the Moon and it will be much easier to start deep space
expeditions, actually. -Like Artemis.
-Yeah, Artemis, and also
the Mars missions. If we can just fuel,
as at a tank station, at the gas station, at the gasoline station if you like just for future missions,
to start from the movement for Mars. It's much easier because
the gravity is much-much less, so that means that we
don't need so much energy. So there's a lot of
possible advantages and that's the reason why people want to go back to the Moon. We have this, water snooper instrument
in a stage where we think we can make it flight ready in one - one and a half year,
so this could be earlier than to send a rover.
-I've got two more questions. The plate you're planning to send to the Moon,
will this be the first piece from Hungary, sent to the Moon like
as whole?
-Yeah, it will be the first piece directly from Hungary. There is some Hungarian knowledge already on the Moon, because
the
Apollo buggies, the Apollo rovers, the cars - if you like -
that the chief engineer is a Hungarian, actually: Ferenc Pavlics.
He was working at a Jet Propulsion Labor at that time and he was
responsible for his castle in that sense is some Hungarian something Hungarian at least.
As a science, scientific and engineering staff is already there, but physically this will be the first thing what we would send to the Moon.
-Now I have to ask you the question from my daughter.
She was asking why don't you send a real dog?
And she was saying yeah, you can't send an elephant, that would be too heavy to snoop for water, but why not a real dog?
-Elephant would be probably a little bit heavy. So just to make the numbers that
the European space agencies, started
thinking about the so-called European Lunar Lander EL3, which will be able to send about 1.5
tons, so 1500 kilograms payload to the Moon, so maybe that would be
closer to an elephant. A dog, a puli is about 10-15 kilograms,
and this would be also the mass of our rover, actually, so depending on the final measures. But
you can tell your daughter, that's first: we don't want to to send a dog.
First we would like to send some robots because the Moon is
not a nice place without special instrument. So the dog would need
air, would need
a kind of space suit.
And then this is what we don't want to do, but i'm pretty sure that in maybe 30-40 years
there will be dogs on the Moon as well.
-Nice place to go then.
-Hopefully!
-And another question: you mentioned Mars and that you could snoop for water on Mars.
Do you have any plans or any goals to reach Mars?
Mars is definitely on the radar but it's not the next futures and matches.
Mars is far-far away and
so there are three Mars probes going into space, and this is because there is every two years the so-called
"launch window" when Mars and Earth have special positions. That means that we can send
spacecraft with less energy
to Mars. So if we will be able to build a
colony or some some bases on the Moon in the next 10 years,
then we might see also some
spacecraft starting from Moon and maybe then we will have also a
kind of Puli in that
version so it will be definitely a bit different than.
-The Puli rover. It doesn't have legs or wheels, but you call them "wegs". I remember that knife correctly.
-This is weg, this is wheel and leg, and this is the combination of weg, which is there, the concept is there,
but it's not many things are using that and we choose it because if we would be able to
to set up a lander, it's definitely not a
Soft landing. So that's an airbag landing.
Maybe and then we thought okay, if we would have an airbag landing on the Moon, similar what on Mars has been done earlier,
then we will end up in a crater.
So we have to just climb out of that crater and that was the reason we started to checking out various mobility systems,
and we said okay wegs are actually a good stuff and we have a lot of design and
at least five different versions,
until we just came up with this, uh pitch formed
end, which is actually also the suspension systems. And then it's very simple we have in an ideal case only these four
moving parts on the rover. So that's it's extremely simple,
very robust and we had tested it in various
really moonlight environments and
we know that we really can climb, 35-40%
grade slopes so it's pretty good. We can also climb over stairs.
So this is always a funny thing if we make some demonstrations, we don't expect to have stairs on the Moon.
But who knows? -Not yet. :)
-So
again, we can
can go to places where other rovers probably not.
-And how did you come up with the idea to just combine these two things?
-Well, we just checked a lot of stuff. One of our colleagues just pointed out that this was the first attempt, maybe in 1996
by ESA for a Mars rover just
to mimic something from the animal world. Very simple toy.
It was just radio controlled car like stuff which looked very very strange,
but this was just a test for us to see, can we move with the sticks? And is it stable enough? And
after we just lost actually two of these early wegs and we still were able to climb and to go.
-Wow! -Okay, so even if the Puli
would lose two of his or its wegs,
we are still able to move, so that says okay that, the concept is fine. Currently we are using the kevlar composite material
for this pitch forms up or if somebody was in Budapest and use the metro, we are also
accused just to have stolen the metro stuff that keeps you
Safely, so but it's not [true], we didn't.
-A Hungarian metro on the Moon!
-Hungary to the Moon. Yeah, so US wants to go back, want to bring people in
2024 to the Moon, it's Artemis projective woman. The first woman should go to the Moon.
I don't know if the human flight will be ready for 2024,
It's a very-very harsh deadline and it's financing whatevers and
we have also the the pandemic situation which still has of course influence on all this projects.
But the goal is still there and the robot explorations will go. The next year
uh
probably five, robotic exploration will go to the Moon. 2021: we'll see probably five launches, uh 2022
at least two or three.
So it will be a mass transport. -Oh, yeah
I'm, so looking forward to this. This year Mars, next year and following..
Sapce is sexy. I say yeah, space is sexy and is getting really very interesting right now.
Also our water snooper is just an example. Oh, you really can shrunk measurements. You can just make everything smaller
so you
you don't need to have a huge rovers. The Russian
Moon rovers the Lunokhods in the early 60's 70's. They were one-ton.
They worked extremely well, but you don't need that big stuff, right?
soon. [The] Message is also, and there's also that,
Actually, what the german friends of us, the Planetary Transport System guy says: everybody can participate it. So just
not only the big space powers, so small countries, small companies can do something really interesting stuff.
-Go for space, space is sexy. Yeah, and we might even see a hop today from Elon Musk. So
yeah, maybe the Moon goal is closer than we think, yeah is everyday one step closer?
-What was the moment that sparked your interest in space? How did you fall in love? -In my childhood?
I don't know it exactly, I was grew up in the 60s.
So I have seen
the second half of the sixties, already with my mind. So that's the spaceflights, the astronauts, the cosmonauts. I have been following the
Apollo missions as nine years old, the child just excited,
jumping around, just jumping around the room. So this is definitely
something what influenced me and I remember also, very nice,
Hungarians are going to lake Balaton. So many Germans knows that as well. So that's:
we spent also
every year two weeks or something like that and one year we went to a movie which was just free
air movies, and we were going back to our home,
and it was a fantastic night. So a wonderful starry sky, of course that time it was much less
illumination so that this is something what I never forget. Such a nice starry sky, so maybe that was that moment, where
I just got the feeling, I have to go to the stars so I have to check
what can I do later, just going to the space and it remained.
I think that this is something very important just to keep this curiosity alive in yourself. So that's the child, the children are curious
and if we can keep this curiosity during our
life.
-Do you have some inspirational words for people that want to go into space and study?
Something that they can
get parts?
-It's a good question actually.
If i'm allowed to associate too, one of them is from Hermann Hesse
"To let the possible happen you have to try to impossible again and again.". So this is just thing a kind of
perseverance or an enduring suggestion you keep on going and the second thing is actually from
count Szécheny. He's sometimes called
the greatest Hungarian from the 19th century.
He
started to build the academy of sciences and a lot of other stuff mid 19th century, and he said also
"Everything is hard for one. Nothing is impossible for many."
. So then this is something I think we can use. It's really just
put the forces together, the strength together and
cooperation
and common work, together.
This is always something which is good and it's even extremely good to go to the stars! -Become part of it. -Yeah, that's cool. So
young kids and children
physics, math can be sexy!
It's not just for
geeks, it's really-really fun
and if you do for instance, there's this kind of analog testing then you can
experience really, extremely nice stories!
-Do you want to add anything?
You have something you wanna.. -Go to the stars! Let's go to stars!
-Thank you very much! -Thank you so much!
If there's one thing this interview has taught us again
it's that sometimes the best ideas come from the smaller teams with a little luck Puli will make signs with an
Incredibly small budget, but extremely smart engineering.
This is exactly why learning about space can be so very interesting!
Thank you for watching, tune in next week for another installment of Wonders of the Universe!
And always remember to subscribe like and comment if you want to see more have a wonderful week!