Google Lunar X Prize: No Winners

Ten years ago, Google has pompously announced the start of the competition, which was named Google Lunar X Prize . The winner should have been a company or an individual who could send an autonomous apparatus to the Moon, not necessarily even a complicated one. However, according to the terms of the competition, the device must be able to walk, to drive about half a kilometer on the surface of the moon, transmitting video and telemetry to Earth.



The deadlines for the completion of the competition were repeatedly postponed. Previously, the end of 2017 was announced as the final deadline. After it turned out that no one would be ready for this deadline, it was decided to extend the competition for another 3 months. In this case, the project manager Chanda Gonzales-Mourer (Chanda Gonzales-Mowrer) said that more time will not be postponed . Well, now it turns out that there are simply no winners in this moon race.



Participants in the lunar race have not yet fizzled out, but the organizers of the competition believe that none of the five teams will invest in the due time. By the way, it turned out that the completion of the Lunar X Prize was once again postponed - the competition ends in March of this year.

')



The moon race itself was announced by Google in 2007, when many thought that the project would be completed, and there were quite a few participants. Before the Lunar X Prize, there was another project - the X Prize, whose goal was to launch a private spacecraft into space, funded not by the state, but by an entrepreneur or company. The winner, by the way, was the team that created SpaceShipOne, a ship that was built with the money of billionaire Paul Allen.





One of the spacecraft, which was created in the framework of the Lunar X Prize. But until March 31, this ship will not fly anywhere.



Interestingly, the organizers of the competition believe that the competition was successful. “As a result of the project implementation, we understood the real state of affairs in a project such as a flight to the moon. Many believe that the organization of space flights to other planets is no longer just a state priority, considering that small teams consisting of entrepreneurs, engineers and inventors can achieve their goals on their own, ”said Peter Diamandis, head of the project. In his opinion, private groups can really cope with this project, although not as quickly as expected.



Now the fund decides whether to look for a new sponsor or continue the contest without promising anyone a cash prize (Google promised an eight-digit amount to the winner in the event of a victory - $ 30 million). At the very beginning of the competition, the following was stated: “Today the limit reached by private individuals and companies is a halo from telecommunications satellites in geostationary orbit at a distance of 38,616 km from the Earth’s surface. The Google Lunar X PRIZE project sets the challenge for entrepreneurs to raise the bar 10 times and take part in this great lunar mission. ”



As for the history of the project, initially 25 teams took part in the competition. After a few years, only five of them remained, including Moon Express, SpaceIL, TeamIndus, Hakuto and Synergy Moon.



The teams in the process of working on the creation of their lunar vehicles encountered difficulties. The main problem is the lack of funding, it is particularly affected SpaceIL and TeamIndus. Hakuto was able to receive an investment of $ 90 million in December. But the problem here is that this team was counting on a landing station from TeamIndus. Well, the latter simply failed. Moon Express has problems during assembly, and Synergy Moon is not enough, which indicates the results of its work. The last team absorbed the previous participants in the competition who could not continue the competition on their own. The structure of Synergy Moon included STELLAR, Independence-X, Omega Envoy and SpaceMETA.



It is interesting that initially the launch of private moon rovers was to take place by the end of 2014. Then the dates were postponed - to 2015, 2016 and 2017. Last year it was reported that the contestants had already reached the home stretch, but some participants had financial problems. Actually, it was they, as well as the absence of launch vehicles and landing systems in some cases, that caused the failure of the entire project.