Google's $30,000,000 Lunar X PRIZE

[Quiz_Master]

"It's been a long time since anyone has explored the surface of the moon. But now Google has teamed up with the X PRIZE Foundation to offer a $30,000,000 bounty to the first privately funded organization to land a robotic rover on the moon. Google, of course, has offered the free Google Moon mapping service for a few years now. Looks like the other search engines have some catching up to do in the space exploration department."

Source : http://science.slashdot.org/article..../09/13/1821259

Google sponsors an exciting challenge to reconquer the Moon and bring interesting data from there. "Private companies from around the world will compete to land a privately funded robotic rover on the Moon that is capable of completing several mission objectives, including roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to the Earth." The prize is $30 million and the intention is to revive the interest for exploring the Moon.

"The Moon is a stepping stone to the rest of the solar system and a source of solutions to some of the most pressing environmental problems that we face on Earth – energy independence and climate change. Already, governments from around the world recognize the importance of lunar exploration, and national space agencies from the United States, Russia, China, India, Japan, and the nations of Europe plan to send probes to the Moon in the coming decade."

Google teamed up with the X PRIZE Foundation, well-known for the Ansari X PRIZE, a competition that offered $10 million to "the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks". Google bought a replica of the SpaceShipOne, the winner of the Ansari X PRIZE, and installed it inside Building 43 at Googleplex.

Source : http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/200...r-x-prize.html

My Take :: Of course Google wants people to land on the moon, they're desperate to find employees for their lunar campus.

[Zeeshan Quireshi]

whoa , kool man !