Google backs private Moon landing

[Rick]

Search giant Google is offering a $30m prize pot to private firms that land a robot rover on the Moon.

The competition to send a robot craft to the Moon is being run with the X-Prize Foundation.

To claim the cash, any craft reaching the lunar surface must perform a series of tasks such as shoot video and roam for specific distances.

Firms interested in trying for the prize have until the end of 2012 to mount their Moonshot.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6993373.stm

[Rick]

The first team to be officially entered into a private race to the Moon has been announced.

Odyssey Moon says it wants to "make history" by sending a robotic lander to the lunar surface without any government funding.

The company is competing for a share of a $30m prize offered by Google and the X-Prize Foundation, designed to stimulate research into low-cost space missions.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7131937.stm

[Rick]

Google and the X Prize Foundation held a ceremony today for the first ten contestants to enter their $30m race to land a privately funded space craft on the Moon.

Eight new teams have joined the previous two entrants, who all gathered at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California to preview their intentions for the purse.

The firms have until the end of 2012 to land an unmanned machine on the lunar surface and successfully send it roving for at least 500 meters. The winning team will receive a $20m grand prize for their effort. That's potentially a fraction of the cost it will take to land a machine there — although some entrants claim they can make it with a budget less than the grand prize.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/22/google_xprize_lunar_teams/

[Mike]

This is great. It's this kind of thing we need to bring the costs of space travel down to (reasonably) sensible price. People should, if they wish to (and have the cash) be able to pay a private company to send a craft into space, or to the moon.

I just wonder what that bloke who claims he owns the moon and has sold off plots will think when people start landing craft on the plots !?!

[mickw]

A private group planning to launch a moon rover to the famed Apollo 11 landing site in a bid to win a $20 million prize announced an ambitious plan Thursday to send five more spacecraft to explore the lunar poles.

The Pittsburgh, Pa.-based firm Astrobotic Technology, Inc., led by Carnegie Mellon University roboticist William "Red" Whittaker, announced plans to launch its first rover to NASA's Tranquility Base in May 2010 to win the Google Lunar X Prize competition, the company announced Thursday

More:   http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20081030/sc_space/privatefirmrevealsambitiousmoonmissionplan

[mickw]

A lunar bouquet of flowers could greet astronauts who next set foot on the moon.

Odyssey Moon, a team competing for a $30 million purse in the Google Lunar X Prize contest, officially joined forces with another private space firm Friday to deliver the first greenhouse to the moon as part the "Lunar Oasis" project.

"Imagine a bright flower on a plant in a crystal clear growth chamber on the surface of the Moon, with the full Earth rising above the Moonscape behind it; these are the ideas that got me interested in space," said Jane Poynter, president and founder of Paragon Space Development Corporation

More:   http://www.space.com/news/090402-moon-flower.html

[mickw]

Nearly 40 years after Americans first set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969 with NASA's historic Apollo 11 flight, a host of private rocketeers are hoping to follow to win a $30 million prize. Here, SPACE.com looks at Astrobotic, one of 17 teams competing in the Google Lunar X Prize:

If there's one name that's on the lips of many Google Lunar X Prize competitors, it's Astrobotic. The team boasts a name that readily conveys its ambitious aspirations for reaching the moon and beyond.

More:   http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/090428-tw-glxp-astrobotic.html

[mickw]

*OK I checked and it's not April 1*

Nearly 40 years after Americans first set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969 with NASA's historic Apollo 11 flight, a host of private rocketeers are hoping to follow to win a $30 million prize. Here, SPACE.com looks at ARCA, one of 17 teams competing in the Google Lunar X Prize:

Former X Prize contenders such as the Romanian team ARCA could have called it a day when Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X Prize on Oct. 4, 2004. Instead, ARCA hopes to build on its previous effort to reach the moon and win the Google Lunar X Prize and even more prize money.

More:   http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/090527-tw-glxp-arca.html

[Rick]

A Californian firm has carried out the first untethered flights of its alcohol-fuelled hover rocket, able to take off and land vertically and potentially offer ballistic flights beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

The rocket in question is the XA-0.1B (aka "Xombie") rocket from Masten Space Systems, fuelled on alcohol and liquid oxygen...

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/23/masten_space_rocket_attempt/