John Carmack's rocket company, Armadillo Aerospace, succeeded in its September 12 attempt to achieve level two in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge 2009.

The challenge awards US$1 million to the team that can lift off and then land a rocket-propelled craft twice for at least 180 seconds within a total time period of 135 minutes and record the most accurate landings. Two further attempts by competing teams are to take place before the challenge ends on October 31.

Armadillo's craft, Scorpius, remote-piloted by Carmack, recorded a mean landing accuracy of under a metre in its challenge attempt, which involved ascending 55 metres from its launch pad and moving 60 metres to land on a second pad. The landing pad is dressed with craters and rocks to resemble the lunar surface, and the flight time is designed to mirror the energy required to land on the Moon from orbit.

The attempt took place in Greenfield, Texas, around 200 miles from Id Software's studios in Mesquite, with Carmack and his team having to wait out rain until mid afternoon. "It was great to win in front of the home crowd," he writes on his blog. "It is bad to fail, but it is worse to fail in front of your wife..."

He also indicates that he will remain focused on Id, even though it is now owned by Zenimax Media: "This doesn't have any real impact on my relative time commitment to Armadillo, since I expect to continue devoting the majority of my time to software for the foreseeable future, but it does mean that I have more personal resources to call on if necessary."

The challenge, part of NASA's Centennial Challenges programme, is designed to stimulate development of vertical take-off and landing technology. A video of the attempt is available here.