$20M To Land On The Moon. Good luck!

Together with the X PRIZE foundation, Google has launched a new, ground-breaking competition: the Lunar X PRIZE Competition. Unlike Google’s fun video contest, the new crowdsourced competition is a little more serious. It concerns…

A global private race to the Moon. Grand Prize: $20.000.000.

The Google Lunar X PRIZE will be awarded to the team that can soft land a craft on the Moon that roams for at least 500 meters and transmits a Mooncast back to Earth. The Grand Prize is $20.000.000 until December 31, 2012; thereafter it will drop to $15.000.000 until December 31, 2014, at which point the competition will be terminated unless extended by Google and the X PRIZE Foundation.

In order to keep competitors interested, there will be a second prize of $5 million, awarded to the next team to land on the moon by the end of 2014. There will also be bonuses awarded for lunar landers that complete certain tasks, such as roving, finding water, or surviving the fortnight-long lunar night. The aim of the competition is to challenge engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration. As such, the competition is an unprecedented crowdsourcing initiative.

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