Puli Space participated in the grandiose end of the year gala of Google Hungary, not surprisingly as the parent company is the main sponsor of our competition. Since we were there, we brought a present too: the just completed lander mockup of our Iteration 2 / Hunveyor-15 project.

Tibor Pacher, our team leader and the lander mockup on stage.

NASA greeted the New Year in style: the two GRAIL spacecraft arrived to the Moon on New Year's Eve and Day, and after a 40-minute braking maneuver, each entered their preliminary orbits. The probes are currently on a wide elliptical orbit and further burns will bring them down to 50 km above the surface over the next two months. Once there, they will map the gravitational field of the Moon which will help to determine it's internal structure.

All companies encounter important milestones during it's lifetime. Maybe not necessarily an everyday business entity, but the Puli Space team already reached important steps too. For example, we already have an office at Colabs for software development and CAD engineering but we need to actually build the various hardware somewhere. But don't worry, the Puli's going to have a home now. Thanks to our sponsors and team members we introduced our new base, the assembly shop on 2011 November 11^th, where we plan to develop and build our first Moon rovers and the necessary accessories.

It has been more than one year now since Puli turned from an idea to a vision and entered the long and winding road leading to fulfilment. Several people and organizations behind those people joined our vision during that period. We were invited by one of them to Székesfehérvár a few weeks ago. István Füzes, who followed us enthusiastically since the start, wished to introduce his own “realm” to us.

The Puli delegation at the factory, from left to right: István Füzes (SAPA, production manager), Ervin Nagy, Dr. Tibor Pacher (team leader), Sándor Baranyai (SAPA), Tamás Kerékgyártó.

There are many reasons why we should go back to the Moon. One of them is called titanium.

If we were looking for the best titanium sites on Earth, the most we would get is ore with 3 percent concentration. On the Moon, however, there are rocks boasting with as much as 18 percent titanium concentration. The large sites were recently found by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and were identified with spectral analysis by planetary geologist Jeffrey Gillis-Davis, from the University of Hawaii. This richness of titanium on the Moon is attributed to the more intense volcanic activity of the planet. It is supposed that as the Moon was cooling and solidifying, some elements – like titanium – did not mix well, so they formed a separate layer under the surface, that was later brought to the surface by the volcanic eruptions.