Google recently announced a partnership with the X Prize foundation for a contest with a grand prize of $20 Million going to the first private company that can safely land a robot on the moon and perform a few certain tasks along the way. To name a few, the mini-rover has travel some 1,312 feet on the moon surface and it has to send semi-live video feed back to earth.
This is an interesting contest to say the least. Typically, it costs government agencies such as NASA millions of dollars to go to the moon. Google hopes to prove that it can be done with considerably less funding. Each team participating has to raise their own money to fund the project and they only have until 2012 when the Grand Prize drops to $15 million. If no one can achieve the goal by 2014, the contest will expire.
Sound like a fun summer project for ya? Well hop to it! Unless you want to go for the big money and launch a manned spacecraft into orbit. You've got until 2010 to do it, but if you can manage to make it into orbit, the prize is $50 Million.
Linkage:
X Prize Foundation
No comments:
Post a Comment