kirat submitted an article about Google teaming up with the X Prize Foundation to give a prize to whoever can land a robotic rover on the moon.

Google will sponsor the newest contest by the X Prize Foundation, which three years ago handed $10 million to a team that sent SpaceShipOne into suborbit and back twice over a two-week period. The nonprofit foundation seeks to promote scientific breakthroughs that benefit humanity.

In the new contest, teams will compete to land a privately funded robotic rover on the moon. It will have to roam at least 500 meters of the lunar surface and complete several missions, such as transmitting photos and videos back to Earth.

A grand prize of $20 million will be awarded to the first team to do this no later than Dec. 31, 2012. A second place award of $5 million will go to a second team that can complete this by Dec. 31, 2014. Bonuses of $5 million will be awarded for additional tasks. The announcement was made at Wired magazine's NextFest tech conference in Los Angeles on Thursday. The event, which ends Sunday, showcases leading-edge technologies.

The "Google Lunar X Prize" is the fourth contest sponsored by the X Prize Foundation. The first, the Ansari X Prize, was the one won by the SpaceShipOne team sponsored by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and headed by aerospace entrepreneur Burt Rutan and his company, Scaled Composites. British entrepreneur Richard Branson has teamed up with Rutan and formed the Spaceship Company, jointly owned by Branson's Virgin Group and Scaled Composites. They are building SpaceShipTwo, which Branson's Virgin Galactic will use to send paying customers into orbit.

In October, the X Prize Foundation announced a contest with a $10million prize, the Archon X Prize for Genetics. The award will go to the first team that can successfully map 100 human genomes in 10 days. Rapid genome sequencing is widely regarded as the next great frontier for science, ushering in an era of personalized preventative medicine.

In April, the foundation announced the $10 million Automotive X Prize. This one is for teams that build vehicles that can get 100 miles per gallon. More than 30 teams have signed letters of intent to compete in that contest.

The idea for the Lunar X Prize emerged from a meeting in March between Google co-founder Larry Page and X Prize Foundation founder Dr. Peter Diamandis. Page is on the foundation's board. Google is the exclusive sponsor. Google already has a Google Moon site, with photos and data focused on the Apollo moon missions.

People thought Google Moon was just for fun, "but now you know we are serious about this," said Page, who helped make the Lunar X Prize announcement. "Science and engineering, if you ask an economist, are the only ways that we have to increase our economics and productivity. We believe that these kinds of contests, in setting an ambitious goal like going to the moon, are really a good way to improve the state of humanity."

This is pretty cool...I always found the X Prize for reusable spacecraft fascinating, and it's interesting to see the different kinds of scientific endeavours they are helping to make possible. Now award a $10 million prize to whoever invents a safe hovercar! It's about time we had those.