Moon Express Funded for Lunar X-Prize!

Submitted by tatwood on Sat, 01/14/2017 - 01:53

 

GLXP is offering $20 million to the first privately funded team to (1) land a spacecraft on the moon, (2) drive a vehicle 500 meters and (3) send back a high-resolution image of the moon as seen by the robot. For additional views of the Moon Express vehicle, click here.

 

The second team to accomplish these three tasks will receive $5 million in prize money. An additional $5 million is slated for those who accomplish a number of additional tasks, bringing the total funding to over $45 million. Prizes expire if not claimed by December 31, 2017.  Other teams participating include SpaceIL from Israel, Team Indus from India, Japan’s Hakuto, and an international partnership named Synergy Moon.

When you consider that it takes a radio wave almost 1.3 seconds to travel from the earth to the moon, the great distance the X-Prize robots will need to fly before undertaking the three required tasks can be put into perspective.
--the editors