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# X marks a pricey spot on moon
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/x-marks-a-pricey-spot-on-moon/
- Published: 2007-09-14T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T02:51:55.000Z
- Author: Melody Hanatani
- Tags: Business, Downtown, #archive-import

*X Prize Foundation ignites $30 million race*

DOWNTOWN The locally based non-profit that inspired the first private flight into space is once again reaching for the stars, teaming up with one of the largest Internet companies to explore the moon.

The X Prize Foundation and Google announced on Thursday a $30 million prize purse for a new competition pitting private companies against one another to build a robotic rover to traverse the moon.

The Google Lunar X Prize will award $20 million to the first team that can build and successfully land a robotic rover on the moon, surviving long enough to travel at least 500 meters and transmit a so-called “mooncast” video back to Earth.

The mooncast must be in a high definition format and capture a 360-degree panoramic photograph that is shot from the lunar surface. The grand prize will be awarded to the first team that can achieve the task by Dec. 31, 2012, after which point the prize will drop to $15 million.

If a team is unable to capture the prize by the end of 2014, the competition could be terminated.

A second-place team will be awarded $5 million and an extra $5 million is available for completing bonus tasks.

The X Prize Foundation, located on the 1400 block of Fourth Street, was launched in 1995 with the goal of creating breakthroughs for the benefit of mankind through hefty prize purse competitions.

The company made headlines in 2004 when Mojave Aerospace Ventures, headed by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen and aircraft designer Burt Rutan constructed and flew the first private spaceship, capturing the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

X Prize followed the successful competition with the Archon X Prize for Genomics contest last year, a competition that will award $10 million to the first team that can demonstrate the ability to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days. Four teams are registered in the competition and another four have expressed interest, said Tom Vander Ark, the president of the X Prize Foundation. A winner is not expected for a few years. “(Space) exploration will always be a third of what we do, and when Google indicated interest in our space prize, the moon was the next step,” said the Santa Monican.

Google is based in Mountain View and maintains offices in Santa Monica.

A recent Gallup poll found that about 68 percent of Americans support a return trip to the moon, according to a release by the X Prize Foundation. The foundation chose lunar exploration for several reasons, claiming the moon enables scientists to learn more about the Earth’s geologic past and might possibly save the Earth.

“When the original Ansari X Prize was launched, it was considered unimaginable that private individuals could commercially venture into space and yet that was accomplished,” said Google cofounder Sergey Brin in statement released on Thursday. “So now, we are here today embarking upon this great adventure of having a nongovernmental, commercial organization return to the moon and explore.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 14, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/091407.pdf?ref=smdp.com)