Next X Prize: $20 Million for Moon Landing

Sept. 13, 2007 —  Following on its successful $10-million contest for a pair of suborbital spaceflights, the X Prize Foundation is unveiling a new competition for a privately financed jaunt to the moon.

First-place winners would receive $20 million for landing a robotic rover on the moon by 2012, driving it around and relaying a video broadcast from the lunar surface. There's an extra $5 million in bonus money for finding water-ice, old Apollo or Russian hardware, or simply surviving a lunar night.

Like the successful 2004 Ansari X Prize, organizers hope the competition, which is being sponsored by Google Inc., will spur commercial space endeavors. In the wake of the suborbital piloted spaceflights of SpaceShipOne, Virgin Galactic, an aspiring space tourism firm owned by Richard Branson, ordered a fleet of passenger spaceships that currently are under construction.

"We're out to prove a number of things," X Prize founder Peter Diamandis told Discovery News in advance of Thursday's official announcement in Los Angeles. "Number one is that space exploration, in particular lunar exploration, can be conducted by private enterprise and hopefully reduce the cost of this by orders of magnitude."

He estimates that teams will need between $20 million and $60 million to build, fly and operate a rover on the moon. Like SpaceShipOne builder Burt Rutan, the Lunar X Prize winner may find future business waiting.

Cool Jobs: Astronaut! Get more Discovery News video here.

"I think there will be a lot of potential customers if this works out," said Pete Warden, the director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., and a long-time proponent of lunar development.

"There's a lot of scientific interest to put hardware on the moon if you can get there affordably. NASA can eventually become a customer," he added.

The U.S. space agency has its own plans for exploration of the moon that are modeled after the Apollo program of the 1960s and early 1970s. Six crews landed on the moon and no one has been there since the final Apollo flight in 1972.

NASA wants to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2020 and eventually establish a permanently occupied lunar base as a training ground for a manned mission to Mars.

Warden sees no conflict between the government's lunar initiative and private exploration efforts.

"The moon is really very analogous to Antarctica," he told Discovery News. "Antarctica is a scientific preserve and it's open to all nations. But it's also open to private scientific purposes. I suspect what we'll see as things unfold that there will be more agreements and discussions of what the legitimate activities (of private exploration on the moon) will be," he said.

Unlike the original X Prize, the foundation this time plans to fund a runner-up as well as a first-place winner, with $5 million set aside if a second team makes it to the moon before the competition ends.

The $20-million grand prize drops to $15 million if the rover landing takes place after Dec. 31, 2012 and before Dec. 31, 2014. The contest also could be extended.

Getting there is just the beginning. The rover will have to travel at least 500 meters on the lunar surface, take video of the scene and relay the mooncast to Earth.

"I'm hoping and believe that the Google Lunar X Prize will prove out new commercial lunar capability that the government can then use to do its work at a 10th of the cost," Diamandis said.

The X Prize Foundation is working on raising additional funds for other incentives, such as for the first team to get its rover to the launch pad.

Several educational and public outreach projects also are planned, including a fund-raiser for armchair explorers to send digital photos and messages to the moon. That idea stems from a Polaroid image of Apollo astronaut Charlie Duke and his family that Duke left behind on the surface of the moon as a legacy.

Teams are also invited to take advantage of an offer by SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the inventor of the PayPal electronic payment system now owned by EBay, to fly their rovers to the moon at cost on his Falcon rockets.

The California-based firm has made two test flights and is preparing for its first operational mission early next year. The first flight was a failure and the second had some technical shortfalls as well.

"Hopefully it (the rover) won't blow up on our rocket," Musk said. "I'd have a lot of people chasing me. I'd have to hide."

Related Links:

The X Prize Foundation

NASA: Apollo's Lunar Leftovers

Astronaut Charlie Duke's Polaroid on the moon

SpaceX

Virgin Galactic