Stratofox has accepted the role as the independent judging organization for the newly-announced LunaCaching Prize. Stratofox will be tasked with observing and approving contest entrants' attempts to win the prize, which requires landing a probe on the moon.
A probe was landed on the moon on March 31, 2005 by TubeRat Aerospace, which contains cryptographic tokens which must be retrieved and read to verify that a contest entrant's probe has reached TubeRat's lunar landing site.
Stratofox's 2005 Coordinator, Will Galloway AE6EY issued a statement on behalf of the team. "It's amazing for our team to be selected for such an enormous privilege. It's unbelievable." He added, "Stratofox has assembled a team of competent hobbyists with an impressive pool of talent. We as a group seek to get involved in 'cool' events where our skills are in demand. A space mission counts as cool by anyone's standards, and a lunar mission even more so."
Stratofox would also like to thank TubeRat Aerospace for inviting several of our team members to their mission control center during the landing. Video of the Mission Control on TubeRat's web site shows some Stratofox members as well.
About Stratofox
Stratofox is a hobbyist group based in San Jose, California which performs tracking and recovery of high-altitude rockets and balloons. Most members of the team have Amateur ("Ham") Radio licenses and/or High Power Rocketry certifications. Stratofox earned a place in history when it recovered the CSXT/GoFast Rocket, the world's first amateur rocket launched to space, on May 18, 2004 in rugged mountains 25 miles away from the launch site.
Stratofox is a Special Interest Group (SIG) of the South Bay Community Network (sbay.org). Stratofox's web site is at www.stratofox.org.