Year 2011 started with an excellently organized planetology forum. Between January 17 and 21 European planetologists met in Leiden (NL) to discuss landing site directives for future ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Agency) missions. At the end of the workshop it was also possible to suggest a specific landing site for the professionals gathered. Of course landing sites on another planet are not pinpointed in just a week, preliminary ideas were already collected before the meeting. The exact landing site is chosen half a year before before a space probe starts, no modifications are later possible. Various workgroups were formed at the meeting: Mars 2016 Demonstration Lander, Mars Sample Return (MSR), ExoMars, Phobos/asteroids, and GLXP-Moon. Hungary was represented by Ákos Kereszturi at ExoMars and Csilla Orgel (PuliSpace, left on the image) in MSR. By the middle of the week the ExoMars and MSR groups were joined, as the two landers will touch down together in 2018 on Mars. Choosing the sites proved rather difficult due to the various scientific goals pursued by these missions. Meetings took place twice a day and settled topics were presented at the end of the day to all participants of the workshop allowing scientists to get an idea of each other’s work. Talks were given between the meetings by professionals from the US and Europe, who presented experiences from past missions (Pathfinder, Mars Exploration Rovers, Beagle-2, Phoenix). The workshop ended with a conference at ESTEC (European Space Research and Technology Centre), Noordwijk. At the end of the event a tour of ESTEC was organized during which facilities for conducting full space missions were visited, and „clean rooms” used for testing space probes were also examined through the glass. All in all a large amount of experience was gathered during this professional brain storming.

Csilla Orgel

The Puli Space Technologies team is pleased to announce that following its successful fund raising initiative launched in September 2010, it transferred the Google Lunar X Prize competition entry fee of $50 000 to the account of the X PRIZE Foundation. Out of more than 20 teams that entered the $30 million competition, the Hungarian team aims to be the first to send a privately built robot to the Moon, and perform different tasks there as laid out in the GLXP announcement. Although the registration gets final with the formal approval and announcement of the X PRIZE Foundation, the team and its fans have a good reason to assume that this will happen shortly.

Following the certainly successful registration, the team, continuously working hard mostly in its free time, aims to become a company that besides meeting the requirements of the GLXP competition, builds and follows a sustainable business model. For the time being, the “Hungarian Pulis” have mostly built on their engineering and scientific strengths, they are also determined to prove that it is worth, desirable and constructive to live up to challenges like the GLXP. In addition, the team members will also continue their educational work, taking advantage of the scientific and lay forums to promote scientific and technical careers.

The team is grateful for the enthusiasm and the financial support of individuals and companies supporting the registration of Puli, and it will make possible and expect the support and interest of individuals and companies that consider the Hungarian space industry and the cause of science important. Further offers are welcome either in the Small Step Club or the Puli Launchpad. The team would like all Hungarians to regard the past and future success of Puli as their own.

The Rádió1 Ice terrace wasn't empty anymore on the 11^th December 2010, a few hours before the first self-organized public event of Puli Space. Although the amount of the crowd on the roof of Westend – the largest shopping mall in Budapest – on a Saturday evening before Christmas was as expected, the weather changed for the worse  and heavy snowfall replaced the sunshine of the previous days. The team members were somewhat disappointed during the preparations beacuse they knew: the most spectacular feat of the evening, the chance to see the Moon through a telescope had to be postponed. The 'scope was assembled though just to be sure, and was standing beside the projector screen.

Prospective teams have the chance to finish their application to the GLXP competition by the end of the year. While Puli Space is still collecting the USD 50 000 entry fee (and we’re nearly done), the X PRIZE foundation has released some statistics detailing the entry process of all applicants.

The newest team submitted their Letter of Intent (LoI) only a few days ago, on the 14th of December, thus obtaining team number 30 (Puli is 28). But will Pomerantz later mentioned on his twitter feed, that even number 31 is taken.

On the GLXP homepage however there are only 24 fully registered teams listed, (20 current and 4 resigned), so how did we get to 31?

Telescope presentation, Space science-night and Puli ice-party on the of the Westend City Center (Budapest), in the Rádió 1 Jégterasz. Unmatched visuals, interesting presentations and an excellent party!

Meet professional space scientists and ask them:

How far is the Moon?
What's the stuff with arsenic?
Where might aliens be?
Why isn't Pluto a planet?

Come if you're interested about the Solar System, the Moon, the Mars, the space probes or the space rights.

Presentations (for example) by: Kovács E. Zoltán (director of the Planetarium of Kecskemét) and András Sik (ELTE).

The second Hungarian Meetup on Futurology was held at the Q building of BME in Budapest, where Csilla Orgel held a talk on the Puli project. In accordance with the rules of the program she presented the aims of the Puli in a short 5 minute presentation. This was followed by a 40 minute discussion with the audience. The other presenters barely had time to speak, the crowd only left at 9:30 p.m. .

The Budapest Science Meetup in November was held at Tűzraktér on the 17th. Csilla Orgel represented the Puli, this time not talking about the Moon, rather about rock glaciers on Mars illustrated with detailed images. Around 100 people watched the talk with great interest, asking questions in the end about the topic.