On April 10th the meanwhile multinational team (Germany, Russia, USA) from Leipzig/Germany has won the first place in the overall standings from over 100 listed teams in best time of 3:37 min. A novelty: The Worldchampionship is given to a team outside of the USA for the first time.

At the Moonbuggy Race, which already is taken out in Huntsville (USA) for the 17th time, the aim is to build up a former foldet vehicle in the shortest time and manage a difficult track only with muscular power.  

Nasa video about German team

On Saturday, May 8th 2010 the Space Education Centre Leipzig gave awards to the sponsers and supporters of this project. Rohloff AG congratulates the Moonbuggy Team to their outstanding perfomance. We are glad to give our share to support this project for education and zeal of the young in Germanys technical future.

The vehicle built in Leipzig/Germany is driven only by muscular power. In this Moonbuggy two SPEEDHUB 500/14 alike are built in the power transmission. Chief constructing engineer Thommy Knabe (19) accomplished with this construction his scientific propaedeutical work for his A-levels. Sport student Max Frank (17) was couch of the team. Science, manual skill, team work, integrity and aim-oriented thinking are encouraged by the sportive Olympic character of fun and exercise.
 
Team Germany is known in the space town Huntsville for four years and is viewed as "Von Braun's Grandchildren". The young engineers' team not even surprised with many technical novelties, but with its multi-nationality. For the first time a Russian student and a female US student belonged to the team. Students from the Ukraine, Hungary and England also worked in the background after a long workshop-tour in Summer 2009 and made their contribution to the Winter School in Leipzig.

Hard strain on the chassis in the race.

Not every team passes! A crash video!

Technical Data of Moonbuggy „Ganymed 2010“:

• measured maximum speed at test: 80 km
• calculated maximum speed-up in track: 1,1 G
• maximum torque on front axle: 254,5 Nm
• drawn maximum load on inclined plane: 3 tons
• time needed (in total of 1,200m track, 17 obstacle): 3:31
• ready to start from a foldet cube (4x4x4ft): 6 sec.
• solar power realtime-data telemetry and analysis with own software
• demountable in 7 pieces of luggage on demand of all airlines

Links in Web:

International Space Education Institute

Team Fotos