Google Sponsors Lunar X PRIZE to Create a Space Race for a New Generation

The X PRIZE Foundation and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a remarkable $30 million prize purse. Private companies from around the world will compete to land a privately funded robotic rover on the Moon that is capable of completing several mission objectives, including roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to the Earth.

The Google Lunar X PRIZE is an unprecedented international competition that will challenge and inspire engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration. The X PRIZE Foundation, best known for the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private suborbital spaceflight, is an educational nonprofit prize organization whose goal is to bring about radical breakthroughs to solve some of the greatest challenges facing the world today.

"The Google Lunar X PRIZE calls on entrepreneurs, engineers and visionaries from around the world to return us to the lunar surface and explore this environment for the benefit of all humanity," said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation. "We are confident that teams from around the world will help develop new robotic and virtual presence technology, which will dramatically reduce the cost of space exploration."

"Having Google fund the purse and title the competition punctuates our desire for breakthrough approaches and global participation," continued Diamandis. "By working with the Google team, we look forward to bringing this historic private space race into every home and classroom. We hope to ignite the imagination of children around the world."

About Lunar Exploration:

In the 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a historic superpower Moon race, which culminated in 12 men exploring the surface of the Moon. The first era of lunar exploration reached a dramatic conclusion in December of 1972 as Apollo 17 Astronauts Captain Gene Cernan and Dr. Harrison Schmitt became the last men on the Moon.

Moon 2.0, the second era of lunar exploration, will not be a quest for "flags and footprints." This time we will go to the Moon to stay. The Moon is a stepping stone to the rest of the solar system and a source of solutions to some of the most pressing environmental problems that we face on Earth -- energy independence and climate change. Already, governments from around the world recognize the importance of lunar exploration, and national space agencies from the United States, Russia, China, India, Japan, and the nations of Europe plan to send probes to the Moon in the coming decade.

Today, the frontier of private enterprise is the halo of communications satellites in geostationary orbit 24,000 miles above our planet. The Google Lunar X PRIZE now challenges private enterprise to reach 10 times beyond its present limits to participate in this great exploration adventure.

About the Prize Purse:

--  The $30 million prize purse is segmented into a $20 million Grand
    Prize, a $5 million Second Prize and $5 million in bonus prizes.  To win
    the Grand Prize, a team must successfully soft land a privately funded
    spacecraft on the Moon, rove on the lunar surface for a minimum of 500
    meters, and transmit a specific set of video, images and data back to the
    Earth.  The Grand Prize is $20 million until December 31st, 2012;
    thereafter it will drop to $15 million until December 31st, 2014, at which
    point the competition will be terminated unless extended by Google and the
    X PRIZE Foundation.  To win the Second Prize, a team must land their
    spacecraft on the Moon, rove and transmit data back to Earth.  Second place
    will be available until December 31st, 2014, at which point the competition
    will be terminated unless extended by Google and the X PRIZE Foundation.

--  Bonus prizes will be won by successfully completing  additional
    mission tasks such as roving longer distances ( > 5,000 meters), imaging
    man made artifacts (e.g. Apollo hardware), discovering water ice, and/or
    surviving through a frigid lunar night (approximately 14.5 Earth days).
    The competing lunar spacecraft will be equipped with high-definition video
    and still cameras, and will send images and data to Earth, which the public
    will be able to view on the Google Lunar X PRIZE website.

Why the Moon?

In a recent Gallup poll, more than two-thirds of Americans (68%) support a return to the Moon, and further missions to points beyond. Some practical benefits to lunar exploration include:

--  Enabling exploration of the solar system and beyond.  Space
    exploration is expensive because every ounce of propellant and spacecraft
    must be launched out of the Earth's strong gravity field.  A natural
    storehouse of materials, lunar soil is more than 40% oxygen by weight and
    oxygen makes up most of the mass of rocket propellant.  Because of its
    shallower gravity well, the Moon is the stepping stone to the universe.

--  The Moon can help save the Earth.  For more than 30 years, NASA and
    the US Department of Energy have experimented with ways to capture abundant
    clean solar energy in space for use on Earth.  Although the technology for
    doing this is well understood, the high cost of launching materials out of
    the Earth's deep gravity well has prevented the implementation of these
    systems.  However, if lunar material is used for space construction, clean
    energy could be supplied on a 24-hour basis without carbon dioxide or other
    hazards to the biosphere.

--  We can learn about the Earth's geologic past.  Thanks to the Moon
    rocks and other information returned by Apollo astronauts, scientists now
    believe that the Moon was created by a collision between a planet-sized
    object and the early Earth.  By exploring our nearest neighbor we are also
    exploring a remnant of ancient Earth.

--  We can see more deeply into space.  The Moon provides a large stable
    platform for astronomical observation unhindered by atmosphere.  The far
    side of the Moon is the one "quiet" place in the Solar System that is
    shielded from the Earth's cacophony of radio, television and data
    broadcasts.  The body of the Moon itself provides this shielding, and a
    radio telescope on the lunar far side can detect energy from the beginning
    of the universe.

--  Driving new technologies and devices.  The Moon may be the most
    hostile environment we face in the near future.  Surviving and exploring
    will require major advances in technology.  Many of those technologies will
    also have practical use back home.