Who will be next to land something on the Moon? Perhaps it will be a privately funded enterprise.
Credit: Apollo Project
BOSTON: Forty years ago, NASA astronauts first walked on the Moon. But the next successful mission to the Moon may be run by privately funded researchers.
To encourage non-government agencies, there is $30 million available for the first privately funded lunar landing. So far it's encouraged 19 teams of researchers to start designing new spacecraft to reach the Moon's surface.
"We're now entering this new area of Moon exploration – what we like to call Moon 2.0," Will Pomerantz, the senior director of space prizes at the X Prize Foundation.
Another X Prize
The Google Lunar X Prize, run by the X Prize Foundation, is an international contest to develop a robot that can safely land on the Moon, travel 500 m over its surface, and transmit data back to Earth. Teams must be at least 90% privately funded, ruling out the government space agencies that have dominated space exploration thus far.
The first successful team will receive $20 million – if they accomplish the goal by the end of 2012. If not, the prize money drops to $15 million. The second team receives $5 million, and another $5 million will be handed out as bonus prizes for completing tasks such as travelling more than 5 km across the Moon. The deadline is December 31, 2014.
The X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit organisation based in California, offers large incentive prizes to further research. Another challenge currently underway is the Archon X Prize for Genomics, a $10 million contest to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days.
Moon 2.0
The Foundation established its lunar competition in 2007 in hopes that private organisations would pioneer an economically stable way to explore the Moon, said Pomerantz.
The first era of lunar exploration did not continue, he said, "because the motivation was so political, not scientific or economic … It proved not to be a sustainable model."
When political reasons for reaching the Moon fizzled, the whole project faded away. Pomerantz says the same should not happen with privately funded organisations that have an economic stake in lunar landings.
Privately funded researchers
So far, 19 teams have entered the contest, but new entries are accepted until the end of 2010. Work is being done in 45 different countries, Pomerantz said, and the participants range from undergraduates to renowned researchers.
One group, Synergy Moon, is made of a unique mix of scientists and artists, said Randa Milliron, the founder of Interorbital Systems, one of three groups collaborating on the team. They are developing their own rocket system, called NEPTUNE 1000, and are hoping to reach the Moon by the end of 2012.
Another team, Astrobiotic, was created by Red Whittaker, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA. Instead of using separate systems for flight and surface operations, as is traditionally done, their mission uses only one. This allows them to reduce "cost, complexity and part count," Whittaker said. Their robot is scheduled to launch May 2011.
"The nice thing about a prize like this is that it motivates a lot of people," Pomerantz said. "They have 19 different technical plans and 19 different ideas of how to pay for their mission."
Government space agencies
Government space agencies are also working toward reaching the Moon. NASA is trying to return humans by 2020, and just last month its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was sent to gather information about the Moon. It was their first lunar launch in a decade. Other countries, such as China, are also pursuing a lunar landing.
But it's more than a competition between private industry and government space agencies. The foundation says NASA can benefit from the new technology privately funded research groups are developing.
Pomerantz said the Moon has a lot of potential for everyone involved; it can further astronomy research, provide resources such as silicon and offer a launch pad for further space exploration. "The Moon is the best stepping stone out into the rest of the universe," he said.
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