Two new
international teams tossed their hats into the lunar ring Tuesday in a race to
win a $30 million contest for landing a privately built spacecraft on the moon.
Euroluna -
a ragtag group of science fiction-loving European engineers - has put its stock
in what team members billed as a "mobile
phone on wheels" to win the international Google Lunar X Prize.
"We've been
dreaming about space, we've been dreaming for awhile," said Euroluna team
leader Palle Haastrup, adding that his group consists mostly of friends and
family in Denmark, Italy and Switzerland. "We've been working on this for more
than a year now."
The
China-based team Selene, meanwhile, hopes its four-wheeled LuRoCa
1 rocket car will take home first prize. Another Lunar X Prize team, which
has kept its identity secret since it joined the contest last year, is expected
to lift its self-imposed veil of mystery in a Wednesday announcement at NASA's
Ames Research Center in California.
"The
response to this prize has been really incredible," said Google Lunar X Prize
Senior Director Will Pomerantz, who announced the new teams today from Google's
headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. "I think it's exceeded
the expectations of any of us here at the X Prize or at Google."
The
Euroluna and Selene teams join 14 others in the running for the $20 million
first prize reserved for the first privately funded team to successfully land a
mobile spacecraft on the moon, move it across a third of a mile (500 meters)
and beam home high-definition television views from the lunar surface. A $5
million prize will go to the second place team and there is another $5 million
in bonus prizes also available, contest organizers said.
Haastrup
said his Euroluna team envisions launching a small 110-pound (50-kg) rover into
Earth orbit aboard a commercial rocket, then flying it from to the moon where
it will land, roll across the lunar surface on four wheels and beam images and
video to Earth. The spacecraft's design is risky and does not include redundant
parts to recover
from failures.
"It will be
small, so we need some luck," Haastrup said, adding that the solar-powered
rover will not include a suspension system. "If we land in a rock garden, we
will not be able to get out of it."
Led by
German-born inventor Markus Bindhammer in Shanghai, the Selene team plans to launch the boxy Selena 1 lander containing its LuRoCa 1 (Lunar Rocket Car 1) rover atop a
Chinese rocket or American booster developed by the U.S. firm SpaceX.
LuRoCa 1 is
envisioned to propel itself across the lunar surface with a rocket engine
fueled by compressed gas, liquid or solid propellant. The design calls for four
high-definition cameras to ride atop the rover.
Founded in
2007, the Google Lunar X Prize competition is sponsored by Google and managed
by the X Prize Foundation of Santa Monica, Calif. The foundation also
spearheaded the $10 million Ansari X Prize for reusable suborbital manned
spacecraft, won in 2004 by the SpaceShipOne vehicle developed by aerospace
pioneer Burt Rutan and financed by millionaire Paul Allen, among other prizes.
"This
second generation era of lunar exploration will have all the inspiration of
Apollo along with a new sense of participation through
this prize program," said Peter Diamandis, the foundation's chairman and
CEO. "Our teams both current and new will facilitate our return to the moon
and, we hope, will thrill the children of planet Earth today."
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