X-Prize

Its been a long time we have sent any probe to the moon….
Now the revolution is back, a number of space agencies are lining up their lunar program.
India is about to launch CHANDRAYAAN I, it has also planned for the CHANDRAYAAN-II , the Japanese space agency is also interested in sending their probe to the moon.

But the actual excitement comes in when you are given an opportunity to land a rover on moon and drive it to a minimum of 500 metres and you can be the winner of $20M.
Yes, Google and X-Prize have come together with this prize.
The major goals are:

1. Softlanding a rover on the moon and it should roam atleast 500 metres, and sends a “mooncast”(hi resolution digital pics and videos… it should be close to one Gigabytes of data)
2. The first prize is $20 M if your rover performs the above said task before any other rover anytime before December 31,2012. after that the prize money decreases to $15M if done before December 31,2014.
3. The second prize is $5 M and other bonus prizes, if your rover roams more than 5000 metres, and discovering water ice on moon, or locating any earthly object on moon,the most “ethnically diverse” team….

There is a large support available for the participants, like

1. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of El Segundo, Calif., for example, will give competing teams a 10 percent price reduction on a launch aboard one of its Falcon launch vehicles - identified as "the first preferred launch provider" for the competition in a Google Lunar X Prize.
2. The SETI Institute of Mountain View, Calif., will make available its Allen Telescope Array to serve as a preferred downlink provider for communications from the Moon to Earth at no cost to competing teams.
3. The St. Louis Science Center in Missouri will coordinate a worldwide network of museums and science centers to take part in the contest.
4. The International Space University, based in Strasbourg, France, will conduct international team outreach and also facilitate the formation of a judging committee.
You may wonder,why should they organize such a competition, well according to the organizers, the private space exploration has a great market in the future, the participation from private candidates will ensure the implementation of very low cost methods of space exploration.

The most important part of this prize is the project should be privately funded,(no government support or subsidy is to be obtained)

X prize has already conducted some similar contests, last time it was to send a payload of three person to suborbital level(100 kms above sea level). It was won by Burt Rutan
The other contest going on is to build a super efficient car.
And in genomics, where every patient will have a personalized treatment based on his Genomic profile.(this project is supported by the greatest physicist of our time Dr.Stephen Hawking)

This is not all, don’t mind if you cannot build your own space craft and participate in the competition but you can still be the history maker…
The organization has also launched a LUNAR LEGACY, where you can send you photograph or message or both to moon, which will be taken to the moon by the winning team for a minimal amount of $10.

So if you think you have the necessary team to build the future of tomorrow come forward and claim your prize…

Links
copy and paste the address on the address bar of your browser....

X-Prize – home page
http://www.xprize.org/

Google lunar prize page
http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/

If you can build your own super efficient car,then this page is for you
http://auto.xprize.org/

To review the draft guidelines
http://auto.xprize.org/auto/automotive-x-prize/draft-guidelines

To participate for the automotive x-prize
http://auto.xprize.org/auto/take-action

The genomics X-prize- homeoage
http://genomics.xprize.org/

Registration form for genomics Xprize
http://genomics.xprize.org/files/downloads/genomics/Archon_X_PRIZE_for_Genomics_Team_Registration_Form.pdf

Genomics Xprize competition guidelines
http://genomics.xprize.org/files/downloads/genomics/Archon_X_PRIZE_for_Genomics_Competiton_Guidelines.pdf

Space Xprize – homepage
http://space.xprize.org/lunar-lander-challenge/

To participate in lunar rover space Xprize
http://space.xprize.org/lunar-lander-challenge/participate_sponsors.php

To send your photograph and message visit
http://www.lunarlegacy.com/index.htm

if u want to participate just let me know at Pankaj4bharat@gmail.com

All the best

Blessed be…