Print
Email
Print Edition Stories
Terrafugia's flying car simulation
MIT researchers have entered into the Google Lunar X-Prize competition to send a privately funded spacecraft to the moon, the school reports.
One of the 12 teams competing for the $30 million X-Prize, named Next Giant Leap, includes MIT aerospace engineering professor and former astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman, and MIT Space Systems Laboratory director David Miller, as well as some MIT students.
Next Giant Leap also includes the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory and Aurora Flight Sciences Corp., both based in Cambridge. Satellite manufacturing company MicroSat Systems Inc. and propulsion-systems company Busek Co. Inc. are also participating.
The competition calls for a privately funded team to send a spacecraft to the moon, land it safely, move it at least 500 meters across the surface and have it send high-resolution images and video back to Earth.
The Google Lunar X-Prize Competition is sponsored by Google Inc. and X-Prize Foundation, a nonprofit focused on driving scientific breakthroughs that benefit humanity. Teams participating in the competition must be at least 90 percent privately funded and must enter by December 31, 2010. The first team to land on the Moon and complete the mission objectives will be awarded $20 million, the second team to do so will be awarded $5 million. Another $5 million will awarded in bonus prizes. The final deadline for winning the prize is December 31, 2014.
RSS Feeds
Comments
Please Login/Register to post comments.
No comments have been added or approved.