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Google to sponsor the $30 million Lunar X Prize race to the moon

In an unpredictable move, the X Prize Foundation and Google announced today that Google Inc. is the sponsor of the newest X Prize venture: send a rover to the Moon and gather footage of the lunar surface.

This is to be the first private venture to send a robot to the lunar surface.

Since their first $10 million prize announcement, to launch a man into space by a private company which prompted Burt Rutan to build Space Ship One, the X Prize Foundation has been creating some buzz around the space exploration private industry. Now, much more is to be expected since the sponsor is the all-mighty Google. Maybe a real Google Moon is in the making?

From their press release:

SANTA MONICA, Calif., September 13, 2007 ? 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.?

Let’s see who takes the bait this time.

Seen it first at the Google Earth Blog. More information at the Google space page and the Google Lunar X Prize site.