Posted on 02/20/2014 6:51:23 AM PST by 12th_Monkey
Landing on the moon is no easy feat, and five teams competing for the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize might just get a little more money to help them send their probes to the lunar surface.
Astrobiotic, Moon Express, Team Indus, Hakuto and Part-Time-Scientists are all in the running to win "milestone prizes" later this year, Google Lunar X Prize officials announced today (Feb. 19). The total purse for the awards is $6 million with the teams competing in three different categories for the funds, X Prize officials said.
Each company's ultimate goal is to ready its probe for launch by Dec. 31, 2015 in order to have a shot at winning the overall prize. To win the grand prize, a company's spacecraft will need to be the first in the competition to move 1,650 feet (500 meters) on the moon and send video, images and data back to Earth from the lunar surface. The milestone prizes are designed to help teams overcome financing problems they could be facing while trying to compete, officials said.
"Because we have teams from such diverse backgrounds, they are often able to think of a solution that a company that may have grown up in the more traditional space engineering sense may not be even aware exists," said Google Lunar X Prize senior director Alexandra Hall. "They may not think about, 'Well, we can take this that functions like this in this environment and use it here.' That's the stuff that I think is really exciting and, ultimately, that's possibly quite game-changing."
The three categories chosen for the milestone prizes represent major hurdles that competing teams need to overcome before being able to land on the moon. According to X Prize officials, the categories are:
Landing System Milestone Prize: $1 million per team — "based on the hardware and software that enables a soft landing on the moon." Mobility Subsystem Milestone Prize: $500,000 per team — "based on the mobility system that allows the craft to move 500 meters after landing." Imaging Subsystem Milestone Prize: $250,000 per team — "based on producing 'Mooncasts' consisting of high-quality images and video on the lunar surface."
"The reason these three in particular were chosen is that they come directly from the things you need to do to win the Google Lunar X Prize," Hall told Space.com. "You need to be able to land successfully on the lunar surface, so your landing subsystem is clearly very important. You then need to take your high-definition video and images so your imaging system, your camera system, is very important. Then you need to be able to move 500 meters and send back more images, so how you move is the third piece of the puzzle."
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I would think the socialists would be dead set against anything private succeeding .... unless it is not so very private.
I don’t see how this will help Muslims feel good about themselves.
If it costs hundreds of millions to get there, how is 10 million an incentive?
Oops...30 million
They nixed Mars already, so maybe the moon will be muzzy free too
In they end they are happy because it leaves more gov’mnt money fo dem sochil purghams
real cost is launching the payload. If it’s small then a smaller rocket can be used cutting the cost. But I do see your point. Whatever they put on the moon has to be hardened to survive the heat, cold and radiation, which can’t be cheap engineering.
Because We Can.
and we can still kick ass when we do
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