In 1927 Charles Lindbergh strapped on some extra gas tanks, put on his ‘good’ mittens, said a little prayer and made his daring, solo leap across the Atlantic to claim the $25,000 Orteig Prize. In 2004, a rocket named ‘SpaceShipOne’- which was fueled by laughing gas and shredded tires- reached an altitude of 69 miles and qualified as the first privately fundedmanned space flight and thereby won the 10 $million ‘Ansari X prize’. In the latest installment of big jackpots for big leaps comes The $30 million Google Lunar X Prize. ‘Lunar’ as in the moon, putting this out of reach for the ‘200 helium balloons tied to a lawn chair’ crowd. As the name suggests, this is a partnership between The X Prize Foundation which sets up all these nifty prizes and Google who conveniently supplies the money. The challenge is to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth. Teams must be at least 90% privately funded and must be registered to compete by December 31, 2010. The first team to land on the Moon and complete the mission objectives will be awarded $20 million; the full first prize is available until December 31, 2012. After that date, the first prize will drop to $15 million. The second team to do so will be awarded $5 million. Another $5 million will be awarded in bonus prizes. The final deadline for winning the prize is December 31, 2014“The Google Lunar X PRIZE calls on entrepreneurs, engineers and visionaries from around the world to return us to the lunar surface and explore this environment for the benefit of all humanity,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation. “We are confident that teams from around the world will help develop new robotic and virtual presence technology, which will dramatically reduce the cost of space exploration.”
The X PRIZE Foundation and Google Inc. announced the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a remarkable $30 million prize purse. Private companies from around the world will compete to land a privately funded robotic rover on the Moon that is capable of completing several mission objectives, including roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to the Earth. The Google Lunar X PRIZE is an unprecedented international competition that will challenge and inspire engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration. The X PRIZE Foundation, best known for the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private suborbital spaceflight, is an educational nonprofit prize organization whose goal is to bring about radical breakthroughs to solve some of the greatest challenges facing the world today.“The Google Lunar X PRIZE calls on entrepreneurs, engineers and visionaries from around the world to return us to the lunar surface and explore this environment for the benefit of all humanity,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation. “We are confident that teams from around the world will help develop new robotic and virtual presence technology, which will dramatically reduce the cost of space exploration.” “Having Google fund the purse and title the competition punctuates our desire for breakthrough approaches and global participation,” continued Diamandis. “By working with the Google team, we look forward to bringing this historic private space race into every home and classroom. We hope to ignite the imagination of children around the world.”
