The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30 million international competition to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth. Teams must be at least 90% privately funded and must be registered to compete by December 31, 2010. The first team to land on the Moon and complete the mission objectives will be awarded $20 million; the full first prize is available until December 31, 2012. After that date, the first prize will drop to $15 million. The second team to do so will be awarded $5 million. Another $5 million will awarded in bonus prizes. The final deadline for winning the prize is December 31, 2014.

Spacehack tip: Team Frednet is an open source, international GLXP team that you can participate in, regardless of background. Lunar Numbat is a team of Australians and New Zealanders who use open source technologies to partner with the GLXP team White Label Space and are open to new participants.

robot prototype by Team Italia, view more teams here

Project owners + coordinators:
William Pomerantz, senior director – space projects
Nicole Jordan, manager – rocket operations
Amanda Stiles, online community manager
X Prize Foundation contact form

To learn more and participate, visit: http://googlelunarxprize.org

To stay up-to-date on this project:
• follow @glxp
• read thelaunchpad.xprize.org
• watch youtube.com/user/googlelunarxprize
• connect with facebook.com/googlelunarxprize

Photo via XPF

An incentive competition designed to accelerate technology developments supporting the commercial creation of a vehicle capable of ferrying cargo or humans back and forth between lunar orbit and the lunar surface. Such a vehicle would have direct application to space exploration goals as well as the personal spaceflight industry. Additionally, the prize will help industry to build new vehicles with enhanced safety and performance, and to develop the operational capacity for quick turnaround vertical take-off, vertical landing flight, which will be of significant use to many facets of the commercial launch procurement market.

The remaining Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge purse of $1,650,000, funded by NASA, is divided into two levels: Level One, worth a total of $150,000, and Level Two, worth a total of $1,500,000. To win prize money in either level, a rocket-propelled vehicle with an assigned payload must take-off vertically, climb to a defined altitude, fly for a pre-determined amount of time, then land vertically on a target that is a fixed distance from the take-off point. After remaining at this location for a period of time, the vehicle must take-off, fly for a pre-determined amount of time, and land again on its original launch pad. The primary difference between the two levels will be in the time of flight, the surface terrain at one of the landing sites, and the corresponding degree of difficulty presented for precision landing and servicing of the vehicles.

Project owners + coordinators:
William Pomerantz, senior director
Cristin Lindsay, vice president

THE DEADLINE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS PROJECT HAS PASSED.

To learn more and participate by September 17, 2009, visit: http://space.xprize.org/lunar-lander-challenge