Google Lunar X-Prize

Google and the X-Prize Foundation are announcing a private race to the Moon. Any group of individuals that is the first to land a rover on the Moon, drive it at least 500 meters, and have it send back data will win a $30 million prize. To get the full prize, the feat must be accomplished by 2012; if it is not done until 2013 or 2014, the prize money will be cut.

The X-Prize Foundation offered a similar prize to stimulate the development of a private, reusable, manned spacecraft. That worked. Burt Rutan is now building ships for Virgin Galactic based on his SpaceShipOne. As a lunar rover competition does not encompass safety considerations beyond the launch phase, odds may be good this prize will be won, as well.

To help those odds even more, SpaceX will offer a ten percent reduction in its rate to launch Prize missions, and the SETI Institute has agreed to provide deep space communications for the missions through its radio telescope array at Hat Creek, California, at no cost to the teams.

If the $30 million is won, several lunar missions could be flown before 2012, and people everywhere will be able to participate in space exploration via the Internet. Such an experience, years before NASA plans to return humans to the Moon, could well be instrumental in keeping the human expansion into space on course.