The world is abuzz with today’s news that Google will back the Lunar X Prize. The $30M prize money is broken out into a $20M Grand Prize, $5M Second Prize, and $5M in bonus prizes. The offer is good through 2012 after which the grand prize will drop to $15M through 2014. After that, the bet’s off unless Google wants to extend it.
To win the Grand Prize, a team needs to land a spacecraft on the moon and drive around for at least 500 meters, and send back “specific” video and images to earth. For second place, a team needs to land a robot, drive around on the moon, and send back some data. Bonus prize money will be given based on the performance of some bonus tasks such as finding water ice or man-made artifacts such as Apollo stuff.
Reference:
