moon

If you’ve ever been bored and felt like putting together some kind of tech project, Google suggested one back in 2007 – and there’s still time to give it a go. The project? A Moon shot. A literal one.

Google’s Lunar XPRIZE offers $20M to the first team able to land a privately-funded robot on the Moon, with other prizes for hitting milestones along the way, and the company has today announced a series of short films documenting the story behind nine of the teams competing for it.

Academy Award-nominated director Orlando von Einsiedel, Executive Producer J.J. Abrams, Bad Robot and Epic Digital have joined forces with Google and XPRIZE to create a documentary web series about the people competing for the Google Lunar XPRIZE … 

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The two competing lunar robots, Astrobotic top, Hakuto bottom

Google’s Lunar XPrize competition, to be the first team to take a robot to the moon, looks like it will come down to a head-to-head race between two competing robots–one American, one Japanese.

While five teams were awarded prizes for achieving key milestones along the way to the final goal, two of the robots appear set to get there first, jointly commissioning the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to carry them to the moon in the second half of 2016, with a race across the lunar surface determining the winner … 
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The Google Lunar Xprize contest has the final goal of taking a robot to the moon, but it’s not just going to lay out the entire $30 million in prizes on one day. Today, Google and Xprize announced five companies that are sharing a total of $5.25 million for reaching milestones in three categories of achievement.

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