Google Sponsors New $30 Million Lunar X Prize

The buzz going around this morning turned out to be worth the wait - the "unnamed" Fortune 500 company beginning a new relationship with the X Prize Foundation is Google. And the new monetary prize is a whopping $30 million.

The Google Lunar X Prize takes the original Ansari X Prize a step further. While the original contest asked entrepreneurs to successfully launch a private craft into orbit, the Lunar X Prize is exactly what it sounds like - a race to the moon. This new X Prize will require a privately funded lunar mission, complete with a rover capable of completing various objectives, including traversing a distance across the surface and transmitting video and data homeward.

The first group to successfully complete the task wins $20 million, with the remaining $10 million split between the second-place team and several other bonuses.

The Google Lunar X Prize represents a new and exciting element of the X Prize Foundation's mission to encourage space-related innovation and technology in the private sector - a mission that will be on display at this year's Wirefly X Prize Cup in New Mexico, later this fall.