Google has announced it is going to fund the X Prize competition which invites competing companies to design and successfully land a robot on the Moon. The $30 million prize dubbed the X Prize will be awarded to the company that not only lands a rover robot on the Moon but also completes several mission objectives, including roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to Earth. Wow! Sounds like a handful. You can see more about this here and here. I decided to be different and show you the video which explains it all in an invigorating fashion reminding me of my teen dream of becoming an astronaut.

In case you are wondering “why the Moon?”, John Marburger (Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President) said the key element of the new vision for space is bringing the Solar System (starting with the Moon) into the economic sphere of the Earth.

Let’s hope our economic adventures on the Moon will produce less problems than they do daily on Earth.

Here are the competition guidelines.

Sounds pretty straight forward! Where do I sign up? Well, I didn’t find such an option, but as soon as I do I am signing up.

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