Internet search giant Google is funding a new moon challenge conquest by offering a $30 million prize pot to private firms that land a robot rover on the moon. As a result we could well see a boost to the commercial space industry as well as the first non-government backed flight to the moon. The top prize of $20 million will go to the company that lands a robot camera, that can move 500m and send high quality pictures and various other data back to earth.
Google Moon has already been launched to encourage participants and is founded upon pictures that have been collected from previous Apollo missions, including the Apollo 11 moon landing.
The competition is being run in conjunction with the X Prize Foundation, which itself promotes technological innovation. It will run until the end of 2012, after which the prize pot will be reduced, if not already claimed, to $12 million.
“We hope to usher in an era of commercial exploration and development, in which small companies, groups of individuals and universities can build, launch and explore the moon and beyond.” it a statement from the X Prize Foundation read.
The Google Lunar X Prize now sits along side another prize already up for grabs for potential competitors from the private sector. $50 million has also been made available by hotel magnate Robert Bigelow for the first private American team to rocket a manned craft into orbit by 2010.
As a result of suchincentive schemes, I wonder whether we will we now see a new global space race in the private sector that mirrors that of the US and Russian governments in the 1960’s. I guess time will tell.
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