Google is offering a total of $30 million in prizes to any private company that can land a robot rover on the moon. The company has decided to team withthe X-Prize Foundation in an attempt to spur the robotic exploration of space. That’s a long way from Internet searches, but there’s no doubt that thecompany has money to spend. The X-Prize Foundation has a history of offering scientific prizes. The first was $10million for private space travel, which was won in 2005 when the SpaceShipOnerocket plane climbed to an altitude of 100km twice inside seven days. A year later they created the Archon X-Prize for Genomics, also worth $10 million, which will be awarded to the first privateresearch group to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days.
But the Google prizes cap them all. To win the top prize of $20 million, a firm must soft-land a rover on the moon and complete a series of tasks, including roaming the surface for at least 500 meters and gathering set images, video and data. All rovers have to be equipped with HD video and still cameras.
The second firm to reach the moon and carry out the tasks will get $5 million.
Companies can win an extra $5 million if their rovers go further on the lunar surface, survive the bitter lunar night, find water-ice and take pictures of old Apollo spacecraft hardware.
The prizes will be offered until 2012. Following that, the top prize will be reduced to $15 million, and if no one has claimed it by 2014, the competition will end.
“We are confident that teams from around the world will help develop new robotic and virtual presence technology, which will dramatically reduce the cost of space exploration," said DrPeter Diamandis, chairman of the X-Prize Foundation in a statement.
