Google Lunar X PRIZE

The challenge calls for teams to compete in successfully launching, landing, and operating a rover on the lunar surface. The prize awards US$20 million to the first team to land a rover on the moon that successfully roves more than 500 meters and transmits back high definition images and video. There is a $5 million second prize, as well as $5 million in potential bonus prizes for extra features such as roving long distances (greater than 5,000 meters), capturing images of man made objects on the moon, detecting ice on one of the Moon's craters, discovering the remains of Apollo program hardware, or surviving a lunar night. The X Prize offers the first prize until December 31, 2012, thereafter it offers $15 million until December 31, 2014.^[4]

Overview

Peter Diamandis, the project founder, wrote on the official webpage, "It has been many decades since we explored the Moon from the lunar surface, and it could be another 6 - 8 years before any government returns. Even then, it will be at a large expense, and probably with little public involvement."^[5]

The goal of the prize is similar to that of the Ansari X PRIZE: to inspire a new generation of private investment in hopes of developing more cost-effective technologies and materials to overcome many limitations of space exploration that are currently taken for granted. This may improve technological capabilities to do such things as:

Origin of the prize

Similar to the way in which the Ansari X PRIZE was formed, the Google Lunar X PRIZE was created out of a former venture of Peter Diamandis to achieve a similar goal. Dr. Diamandis served as CEO of BlastOff! Corporation, a commercial initiative to land a robotic spacecraft on the Moon as a mix of entertainment, internet, and space. Although it was ultimately unsuccessful, the BlastOff! initiative paved the way for the Google Lunar X PRIZE.^[6]

Initially, NASA was the planned sponsor and the prize purse was just US$20 million. As NASA is a federal agency of the United States government, and thus funded by US tax money, the prize would only have been available to teams from the United States. The original intention was to propose the idea to other national space agencies, including the European Space Agency and the Japanese space agency, in the hope that they would offer similar prize purses. However, budget setbacks stopped NASA from sponsoring the prize. Peter Diamandis then presented the idea to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Google, at an X Prize Foundation board meeting. They agreed to sponsor it, and also to increase the prize purse to US$30 million, allowing for a second place prize, as well as bonus prizes.

Competitors

As of October 2008, there are fourteen officially registered Google Lunar X Prize teams: