"February 21, 2008, Mountain View, CA – The X PRIZE Foundation and Google, Inc. today announced the first ten teams to register for the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a remarkable $30 million in prizes. This international group of teams will compete to land a privately funded robotic craft on the Moon that is capable of roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to the Earth."
"The X PRIZE Foundation has also announced that Space Florida will be a new preferred partner and the first preferred launch site for the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE competition. ... As the first preferred launch site, Space Florida will award an additional prize of $2 million to the Grand Prize winner of the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition... Space Florida was created by the Florida Legislature to sustain Florida's position as the global leader in space exploration and commerce, and is the principal organization charged with promoting and developing Florida's aerospace industry."
"The ten teams are:
Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA): Based in Valcea, Romania and led by Dumitru Popescu, ARCA was also a contender in the Ansari X PRIZE. ... The craft they plan to enter in the Google Lunar X PRIZE will be called the “European Lunar Explorer.”
Astrobotic: Team Astrobotic, [a consortium of Carnegie Mellon University, Raytheon Company and additional institutions] led by Dr. William “Red” Whittaker [and specialises in] autonomous navigation through stereo vision a[enabling] Carnegie Mellon’s robots to automatically avoid obstacles and select their own route across unmapped terrain. Astrobotic will compete for the prize using their “Artemis Lander” and “Red Rover.”
Chandah: Chandah, meaning “Moon” in Sanskrit, was founded by Adil Jafry [whose] goal is to catalyze commercialization of space, and bring advances in space travel, tourism, sciences, and technology to the general public at large. Team Chandah’s spacecraft will be named “Shehrezade.”
FREDNET: Headed by Fred J. Bourgeois III, this multi-national team is comprised of systems, software, and hardware developers [whose] goal is to bring the same successful approach used in developing major software systems (such as the Internet, and Linux) to bear on the problems associated with Space Exploration and Research.
LunaTrex: Led by Pete Bitar, LunaTrex is comprised of several individuals, companies, and universities from all over the United States, some of whom were also competitors for the Ansari X PRIZE. Each team member brings their own history to the mix: rocket science, high-altitude near-space R&D, defense directed-energy technology, aviation design and development, robotics, trajectories, and non-conventional propulsion expertise. The name of their competing craft will be “Tumbleweed.”
Micro-Space Inc.: Helmed by Richard Speck and based in Colorado, Micro-Space [has] flown 17 innovative, bipropellant liquid fuel rockets, three near-hover rockets with vectored thrust guidance, scores of flights with telemetry and radio tracking, and several innovative life support systems [and competed] in the Ansari X PRIZE as well as the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. Their “Human Lunar Lander” will compete for Google Lunar X PRIZE.
Odyssey Moon: The first team to register for the competition, Odyssey Moon is a private commercial lunar enterprise headquartered in the Isle of Man and founded by Dr. Robert Richards. ... Their Google Lunar X PRIZE craft is titled “MoonOne (M-1).”
Quantum3: A U.S.-based team, Quantum3 is led by Paul Carliner, a senior executive in the aerospace industry. They propose to field a small spacecraft launched from an East Coast range using launch-coast-burn trajectory for a propulsive soft landing on the surface of the Moon at the Sea of Tranquility. ... Their craft will be called “Moondancer.”
Southern California Selene Group: According to team leader Harold Rosen, the approach taken by the Santa Monica Selene Group can be succinctly summarized as “an elegantly simple design that is relatively inexpensive to implement.” The architecture for their “Spirit of Southern California” spacecraft will combine the control and communication systems used in some of the earliest communications satellites with the latest in electronic and sensor technology.
Team Italia: Based in Italy and led by Prof. Amalia ErcPublish Postoli-Finzi, Team Italia is a collaboration between several universities. The team is currently running a prototype of its system at Politecnico di Milano. The architecture of the robotic system is under study: a single big rover or a colony of many robots, light and mobile, with many legs and wheels, able to be compacted in the lander and distributed quickly on the Moon's surface with cameras and sensory support."
