In Brief

SpaceX's Elon Musk Takes Ice Bucket Challenge

Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind the private rocket company SpaceX, has accepted the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Not to be outdone by Bill Gates, the billionaire inventor created a contraption that allowed five buckets of ice water (one for each of his kids) to be dumped on his head all at once. Musk posted the video to SpaceX's YouTube page over the weekend.

Unless you don't have an Internet connection, you're probably familiar with the Ice Bucket Challenge, which has swept social media over the past few weeks. If someone nominates you to take the challenge, you're supposed to either donate $100 to ALS research or post a video of yourself getting doused with ice water and call on others to do the same.

Celebrities have gotten in on the game. Musk was nominated by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who accepted the challenge from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Over Twitter, Musk passed the torch to pro skateboarder Tony Hawk, actor Johnny Depp and Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson (who has apparently already stepped up to the challenge).

The effort is designed to raise awareness for the devastating, muscle-wasting condition known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. So far, the ALS Association said it has received $22.9 million in donations as part of the viral challenge.

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Megan Gannon
Space.com Contributing Writer

Megan has been writing for Live Science and Space.com since 2012. Her interests range from archaeology to space exploration, and she has a bachelor's degree in English and art history from New York University. Megan spent two years as a reporter on the national desk at NewsCore. She has watched dinosaur auctions, witnessed rocket launches, licked ancient pottery sherds in Cyprus and flown in zero gravity on a Zero Gravity Corp. to follow students sparking weightless fires for science. Follow her on Twitter for her latest project.