The Google Lunar X-Prize

Google is on everyone’s lips and in our computer oriented world there is probably not a day, where we don’t encounter the name of the US enterprise with its famous search engine in one form or another. We google – this is how the Oxford English Dictionaries have it since 2006.

Google has demonstrated more than once, how to change the world with unconventional ideas. Since 2007, there is a project, which continues this tradition: the »Google Lunar X Prize«.

Google offers prize money in a competition for a total amount of 30 million US dollars (!) to the person or team, being able to privately send a probe to the Moon for fulfilling certain task, i.e.  to have a remote controlled vehicle (Rover) drive 500 metres, or to send pictures back to Earth. Who manages to be the first to land on the Moon and is successful by the end of 2015, will receive the prize.

On the website of the competition www.googlelunarxprize.org you can see 23 active teams, are working more or less intensively (and more or less successfully) to find solutions. We will see, whether the efforts will be crowned with success – it certainly is an exciting idea and we as people are challenged to expand the boundaries of our imagination. And that hasn’t caused anyone any harm yet 😉