Puli Space Competes For A Resource Role On The Moon

Everyone likes an underdog. Especially one with a friendly smile and Bob Marley hair. But it's not just the reggae-loving sheepdog mascot that makes it easy to root for Team Puli from Hungary. It's the setbacks suffered and the team's persistence in finding any possible way against big odds to get a small space company and a small country to the Moon.

Now, the rover team that formed with the one big goal to win a $20 million Google Lunar XPRIZE and the bragging rights that went along with it has a new strategy. It's collecting the small wins, hoping to crack open the door to the niche that makes Puli Space Technologies a permanent player in the massive Moon economy to come.

Persistence And The Participation Prize

"Our first goal was really just to set up a project to bring Hungary also to the Moon... And during the years we learned a lot. So, we learned that it is much more than just a one-time shot," said Dr. Tibor Pacher, founder and CEO of Puli Space Technologies in a December Zoom call with Outerspaceland. "I mean, the next 10 years will be much more interesting than these last 10 years, because if only 50 percent of the missions which are in planning right now will be successful, it will be huge and we will be a part of it."

It's a rosy outlook for a company buffeted by bad news throughout its first decade of existence. In fact, Pacher kicked off an otherwise upbeat Zoom call with the latest hard truth for a space company operating in a country with few space investors within the still nascent worldwide commercial space sector - that Puli won't be sending a rover to the Moon on Astrobotic's historic 2021 Peregrine mission as hoped. He said Puli wasn't able to secure last-minute financial help from the Hungarian government to buy a ticket for the Puli Lunar Rover on the Astrobotic lander.

"I don't mean it's personal, but it's really, when do you say it is coming to an end?" Pacher said. "We have put so [much] heart in this and we have really achieved a lot and, still, we are not really successful with raising [the] necessary money. And sometimes, just you are saying, Okay. It has to be finished."

"And, this was one of the experiences, I believe, that all the time, we just say, No. We shouldn't finish. Because we did so much and we achieved with really very minimum of real money or staff," Pacher said. "And I think, actually, right now we are on track. We can show that it was worth doing."

So, even though the Lunar XPRIZE proved out of reach (It wasn't claimed by any team in the contest), and even though the Puli Lunar Rover born out of that contest won't be going to the Moon this year, fortune may have finally smiled on Puli and rewarded its persistence. Oddly enough, it may be a small side project of the Lunar Rover competing in a spin-off of the XPRIZE that ultimately leads to a lunar participation prize worth much more than a mere $20 million.

Winning With Water Snooper

While developing their Lunar Rover and giving it something important to do on the Moon, smart scientists and engineers at Puli started working on an innovative way to find water ice on the Moon using off-the-shelf electronic parts. They called their new little resource hound the Puli Lunar Water Snooper, imagining it as an inexpensive way to give almost any Moon rover water-sniffing super powers. Then, as luck would have it, the HeroX website, an XPRIZE off-shoot, published an open challenge from NASA that was right in the wheelhouse of the Water Snooper.

The Honey, I Shrunk The NASA Payload challenge put out a worldwide call for ideas on how to miniaturize Moon-bound science and shrink payloads down to about the size of a bar of soap, according to a Puli press release about the challenge. But the really hard part turned out to be the constraints NASA slapped on power consumption. Payloads would have an upper limit of just four watts, Pacher said. That's like lighting up only a single screw-in bulb on a string of outdoor Christmas lights.

Puli's Water Snooper is designed to use very small CMOS sensors common in web cams to detect evidence of water ice trapped in the regolith on the Moon. A CERN radiation physicist, who also leads the Puli science team, came up with the idea to use the low-cost sensors in this novel way, Pacher said. One reference sensor measures cosmic rays penetrating the lunar regolith, and the other two sensors, each covered with a special coating, measure different types of neutrons escaping into space. The idea is to detect hydrogen and, by extension, water. If it works, the Water Snooper could be a very compact and inexpensive alternative to the mass spectrometer NASA plans to use on its own upcoming water-seeking rover, he said.

Puli took first place in the Lunar Resource category of the Honey, I Shrunk the NASA Payload challenge and earned praise for its Water Snooper idea. The cash prize wasn't huge - only $30,000, but Puli got some much needed momentum with the win. Pacher said any recognition from NASA raises eyebrows in his own country. That can help with fund raising for future projects, which has been difficult for Puli so far.

Then, on the heels of a successful competition that yielded dozens of great ideas, NASA launched a follow-up to try to turn concepts like the Water Snooper into reality. Honey, I Shrunk The NASA Payload, The Sequel has an $800,000 total prize purse paid out over two phases.

Puli and the rest of the invited teams have already completed Phase 1 of The Sequel, and this coming Thursday, January 28, Puli will find out if the Water Snooper advances to Phase 2 along with three other finalists. That would unlock up to $225,000 for Puli to develop working prototypes of the Water Snooper for NASA, which will then be judged against competitors for a final $100,000 first prize, according to contest rules.

Winning The Sequel would be a "big deal," Pacher said. But the best possible outcome for Puli would be for the Water Snooper to earn a spot on an upcoming NASA lunar mission as a result of the HeroX challenges. It's not a guaranteed outcome for the winner of The Sequel. But it could happen even if Puli doesn't win. The bottom line is, if NASA likes what it sees, a Water Snooper could see action at the lunar south pole as soon as 2023, Pacher said. It's a timeline that roughly coincides with NASA's own VIPER water resource mission.

Pacher cautioned it's way to soon to float the idea at NASA, but he said, "[It] would be, for instance, a very nice [thing to compare side-by-side] NASA's water-looking instrument with ours. Because then, you would have two different detectors working with different principles, and you can just compare the results. And then, you could use it to confirm measurements, also, in this way."

An Army Of Rugged Rovers

Now, imagine a formation of micro rovers fanning out across the lunar landscape scouring every square inch of regolith for signs of water ice. That's a highly efficient way to prospect for resources, and an affordable and lightweight Water Snooper could make that possible.

Water Snoopers riding on Puli Lunar Rovers would be especially good at getting at the hard to reach places on the Moon, Pacher said. "If everything goes right, this could be a very good niche for us, actually."

Sadly, like Pacher said earlier, a Puli Lunar Rover won't be going to the Moon to be tested this year. And he admitted the first Water Snooper on the Moon - if NASA sends it - would more than likely be mounted on another kind of micro rover, like CubeRover from Astrobotic. But that doesn't mean the Puli Lunar Rover dream is dead. Pacher still thinks his team has one of the best mini Moon mobility machines in development today.

And it can climb stairs.

"We don't expect stairs on the Moon, but it's always a funny part of any demonstration," Pacher said.

The secret is in the genius of the rover's wheel-legs, or whegs, that give it the ability to roll over some pretty rough terrain. An added bonus of the whegs is their ability to collapse to half their diameter when the rover is stowed for transport.

"So, actually, the original idea is still, I believe, a good one, because it's very simple. In the ideal version, you have only four moving parts... Really, it is a very robust design, and if we had some problems, it was mostly because of the driving team," Pacher said with a chuckle.

Puli Lunar Rover prototypes have been driven on difficult terrain in analog tests all over the world. From a volcanic mountain in Hawaii to mimic the Moon to the Sahara Desert to mimic Mars, Puli engineers have gone way out of their way to simulate extreme off-world environments for their rover. But the Moon is ultra extreme, which is another reason Pacher thinks his company could be on the right track with its rover concept.

"[There is] a chance, at least, to make it pretty cheap. Even if it is not prepared for the lunar night, whatever, at first. But you can have four, five small rovers, which are not so heavy. Even if 50 percent dies, you have the other 50 percent," Pacher said. "[On the other hand], if you have one rover, and if it dies, then you have no rover."

Save Our Spot

The Puli Lunar Rover may not be hitching a ride on Peregrine this year, but Hungary will be represented on that historic mission.

Puli still plans to send its Spacetime Plaque, a "common memory" of Hungary etched in microprint on a small square of aluminum alloy, which will live for almost forever attached to what could be the first commercial lander ever on the surface of the Moon. A ceramic copy of the Spacetime Plaque will be tucked away in the Memory of Mankind time capsule deep in the salt mines at Hallstatt, Austria, Pacher said.

It's not the dramatic declaration of Hungary's arrival on the New Space scene that a Puli Lunar Rover winning an XPRIZE might have been. It's more of a symbolic marker that reserves a more active role for a proud country with talented people and space companies that don't quit.

"One of the things that we can say, and that is really my best knowledge, that everything which has flown [in space] from Hungarian engineers worked. So, this is [an] extremely good percentage," Pacher said with a wry smile. It will not be a 100% score in the future, but "I think it will stay a very high score."

Update (January 28, 2021): NASA announced on January 28, 2021 that Puli did advance to Phase 2 of the Honey, I Shrunk The NASA Payload, The Sequel HeroX challenge, earning $225,000 for Water Snooper development. Puli advanced with three other teams.

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