Google’s Lunar X Prize Challenge Has Eyes For The Moon

Boston (dbTechno) - Google’s Lunar X Prize competition has kicked off, with ten teams competing for the $30 million Google has put up for grabs. The goal of the competition is to land a robotic rover on the moon by the year 2014.

There are ten teams from five different countries taking part in the competition, which has gained global interest. The winner of the challenge will be granted $20 million. Second place will manage to snag $5 million, with another $5 million being given out as bonus money during the challenge.

This is no easy task as the moon is one rough place. These robots will be put in some hard conditions, with temperatures around 200 degrees below zero and colder. They are confident they will be back on the moon soon though.

The ten teams in the challenge include Team Italia, the Southern California Selene Group with Spirit of Southern California, Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association with their European Space Explorer, Astrobotic with Artemis Lander and Red Rover, as well as Frednet, Lunatex with Tumbleweed, Micro-Space with Human Lunar Lander, Odyssey Moon with MoonOne, Quantum 3 with Moondancer, and Chandah with Shehrezade.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin gave off a bit of his excitement in regards to the challenge stating “The idea of seeing these rovers on the moon and returning after 40 years, faster than the national programs is really exciting to me. We love entrepreneurship here, it’s worked well for us. So we’re looking forward to the launches in the coming years.”

Google is looking to beat NASA’s plan to make a return too the moon.