Skip to footer

What will be the first corporation on the moon?

The private race to the moon is intensifying, as companies vie for Google's Lunar X Prize.

|
Courtesy of Spaceflight Industries
Artist's illustration of SpaceIL’s lunar lander after it has separated from its Falcon 9 rocket.
|
Courtesy of SpaceIL
Artist's illustration of SpaceIL's newly designed robotic lander on the moon.
|
Courtesy of SpaceIL
Image detailing the different systems and components of SpaceIL's robotic lunar lander, which weighs 1,100 lbs. (500 kilograms) and measures 5 feet high by 6.6 feet wide (1.5 by 2 meters).

The private race to the moon is really starting to heat up.

A team from Israel called SpaceIL has signed a contract to launch its robotic lunar lander toward the moon aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in the second half of 2017. SpaceIL is therefore a strong contender to win the $20 million top prize in the Google Lunar X Prize (GLXP), contest organizers said.

"We are proud to officially confirm receipt and verification of SpaceIL's launch contract, positioning them as the first and only Google Lunar X Prize team to demonstrate this important achievement thus far," X Prize Vice Chairman and President Bob Weiss said in a statement. [Google Lunar X-Prize: The Private Moon Race Teams in Pictures]

"The magnitude of this achievement cannot be overstated, representing an unprecedented and monumental commitment for a privately funded organization, and kicks off an exciting phase of the competition in which the other 15 teams now have until the end of 2016 to produce their own verified launch contracts," Weiss added. "It gives all of us at X Prize and Google the great pride to say, 'The new space race is on!'"

Courtesy of SpaceIL
Artist's illustration of SpaceIL's newly designed robotic lander on the moon.

SpaceIL is not the only GLXP team with firm plans to head to the moon. For example, California-based Moon Express announced its own launch deal with the spaceflight company Rocket Lab last week, and Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic signed a contract with SpaceX back in 2011.

Moon Express aims to launch its robotic MX-1 lander to the moon for the first time in 2017, while Astrobotic team members have said they plan to loft their Griffin lander atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sometime next year.

But SpaceIL is the only team so far to initiate the verification process, in which contest organizers review and assess the launch contract and supporting documents, X Prize representatives told Space.com. This milestone is a big deal: At least one GLXP team had to announce a verified launch contract by the end of 2015 for the competition to be extended through Dec. 31, 2017.

The Google Lunar X Prize was created in 2007 to encourage the development of the private spaceflight industry, and hopefully help usher in a new era of affordable access to the moon and other space destinations.

The first privately funded team to successfully land a robotic craft on the moon, have the lander move at least 1,650 feet (500 meters), and beam high-definition video and photos back to Earth by the end of 2017 will win the $20 million grand prize. The second team to accomplish these goals will get $5 million; another $5 million is set aside for other milestones, bringing the total purse to $30 million.

Sixteen teams remain in the competition.

SpaceIL signed its launch deal with Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries, which recently purchased a Falcon 9launch from SpaceX. (Falcon 9 flights currently sell for about $60 million.) SpaceIL's lunar lander will get a "co-lead spot" on the launch, sitting inside a capsule among a number of secondary payloads, GLXP representatives said.

Courtesy of SpaceIL
Image detailing the different systems and components of SpaceIL's robotic lunar lander, which weighs 1,100 lbs. (500 kilograms) and measures 5 feet high by 6.6 feet wide (1.5 by 2 meters).

SpaceIL team members announced the contract today (Oct. 7) at a press conference in Jerusalem, Israel, during which they also revealed the new design of their 1,100-lb. (500 kilograms) lander, which is about 5 feet high by 6.6 feet wide (1.5 by 2 m).

"Last year, we made significant strides toward landing on the moon, both in terms of project financing and in terms of the engineering design, and now, we are thrilled to finally secure our launch agreement," SpaceIL CEO Eran Privman said in the same statement. "This takes us one huge step closer to realize our vision of recreating an 'Apollo effect' in Israel: to inspire a new generation to pursue science, engineering, technology and math."

To date, only three entities have succeeded in soft-landing a spacecraft on the lunar surface — the governments of the United States, the former Soviet Union and China.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook orGoogle+. Originally published on Space.com.

Copyright 2015 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to What will be the first corporation on the moon?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/1007/What-will-be-the-first-corporation-on-the-moon
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe