Five private teams are competing in their own unique way to operate a moon landing.
The Google Lunar XPRIZE is a competition started by XPRIZE whereas the multi-million awards are the courtesy of Google. The aim of this race is to encourage the success of the first moon landing performed by a private company. There are five participants left in the game. They have to record a successful landing on the Moon by December 2017, cover 500 meters, and send back to Earth videos and images of high-definition.
The five remaining privately held teams were announced on Tuesday, and they are competing for an extraordinary prize of $30 million. The finalists are actually Team Indus from India, Japanese team Hakuto, Moon Express from Florida, the SpaceIL from Israel, and Synergy Moon. These are the only teams in a group of 16 that managed to meet the deadline of December 31, 2016. By this date, they had to secure a verified launch deal.
Chanda Gonzalez-Mowrer, the senior director from GLXP, stated that he didn’t expect a total of five finalists, which is good news. He also founds admirable and interesting the fact that each of the contestants is employing different methods to manage a successful moon landing. The team that secures first a clean mission will get the first prize which consists of $20 million. The second successful landing will be awarded $5 million. Another prize valued at $5 million will go to the team that found interesting discoveries on Moon such as tracing signs of water. Thus, the funds for this race amounts to a total of $30 million.
The Google Lunar XPRIZE came into being in 2007, and it is more than just a contest for private companies. There are many other such projects pertaining to the X Prize Foundation. Each of them has a specific aim that comes to the great benefit of the whole humanity. While other missions regard improved health care or environmental issues, the Google Lunar XPRIZE targets the introduction of a low-cost space flight to the market. Since no team can get more than 10% of financial resources from the government, they were challenged to find private funds for their own project.
Nonetheless, all 16 teams that took part in this competition will receive a financial reward for their efforts. They will have to share a $1 million between them as they succeeded to impress the committee with their unique solutions for the moon landing.
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