Google bankrolls $30M moon contest
By Traci Watson, USA TODAY
Nearly 40 years after the USA beat the Soviets to the moon Internet giant Google said Thursday it will give $20 million to the first private group to land a roving robot on the lunar surface — a prize likely to start a 21st-century space race.
The giant purse is being offered by the X-Prize Foundation, which awarded $10 million in 2005 to the first privately funded group to launch a human into space.
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The only robotic rovers to have negotiated the rough lunar terrain were launched by the Soviets in the 1970s. A budget shortfall forced NASA this spring to cancel its plan to send a rover to cruise the moon.
Google is taking part because the contest "is really going to accomplish something very, very impressive," company co-founder Sergey Brin said on a pre-taped video played at the announcement in San Francisco. The goal is "something only a couple of governments have ever accomplished."
The competition is open to groups from around the world, as long as they get no more than 10% of their funding from government sources.
For a team to win the $20 million grand prize, its vehicle must ramble at least a quarter-mile over the lunar surface and send video back to Earth. A $10 million second prize is reserved for the first spacecraft that can't rove but still transmits data from moon to Earth.
Another $10 million will go to super-rovers able to perform tasks such as roaming long distances or snapping pictures of equipment discarded by astronauts.
The contest's goals are "incredibly feasible," said Peter Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center, which has been working on similar rovers. "We think most of the components could be purchased off the shelf."
NASA plans to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020 and to establish a lunar research camp, but Worden said the new contest doesn't threaten the agency.
Such private space exploration "is exactly what we hoped would happen," Worden said. "NASA is pretty excited about this."
Despite the energy poured into the race to the moon in the 1960s, "we went, we came back and nothing came of it," said Peter Diamandis, X-Prize chairman. "Our vision now is: we're going back to the moon to stay." He argued that can only happen with the involvement of private companies, whose budgets are not subject to the whims of Congress and the White House.
Diamandis said he expects entrants from the United States, China, Europe and Japan and hopes the first flight will launch in 2010 or 2011.
Sending a robot to the moon is much easier and safer than sending a human being, rover experts said. Challenges remain:
•Lunar debris. Because the moon has no protective atmosphere, tiny pieces of space rock rain down on the surface, said William Whitaker of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute.
"Anything from computers to radios could be destroyed," he said. The particles "are moving very, very fast so they just cut right through things."
•Landing. The lack of an atmosphere also means that parachutes don't work, so a spacecraft's touchdown has to be cushioned by rockets that fire to brake at just the right time, said Anders Elfving, the manager of a Mars rover effort for the European Space Agency.
"Those types of engines are not that easy to develop," he said.
•Safe driving. A rover that steers itself needs to have sophisticated software and sensors, said Rob Manning, a top designer for the NASA rovers exploring Mars. A rover's travels could also be remote-controlled from Earth, but that requires antennas around the globe.
"You have to be very careful not to fall into these volcanic (valleys), and there are some big boulders, too," Manning said.
Despite the obstacles, all the engineers agreed a privately funded group could land and operate a moon buggy, though it may not be possible for $20 million. Competition will be stiff, they said.
"This (contest) is going to build an entire culture." Whittaker predicted. "This will be a rumble."
Source: USA TODAY research
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