Business

Google wants the moon
by Claudia Sonea

After launching Google Mars and Google Earth, Web browser-based mapping tools that give users an up-close, interactive view, Google wants to broadcast images from the moon, therefore they offer a prize of 20 million dollars to the first private company that can land a robotic rover on the moon, smart enough to record at least 1,312 feet on the moon and send self-portraits, panoramic views and near-real-time videos back to Earth that will be streamed on Google's Web site. Google co-founder Larry Page stated at WIRED magazine's technology show in Los Angeles they are having great expectations. Their partnership with X Prize Foundation (best known for hosting the Ansari X Prize contest, which led to the first manned private spaceflight in 2004) comes as no surprise, Page collaborating to other projects as well- the charity auction for the foundation at the company's Mountain View headquarters. If no one will prove to be worthy of such an auction, the prize will drop to $15 million until the end of 2014. Also the teams that fulfill the minimum requirements will win 5 million dollars and also the second place will win $5 million. William "Red" Whittaker of Carnegie Mellon University who is already famous the last year robot race across the Mojave Desert said he will make a team in order to build a lunar rover. This contest comes in a time when governments are in competition to revive interest in lunar exploration: Japan's space agency, JAXA, will launch SELENE from a remote Pacific Island on Friday, while NASA will rocket a lunar orbiter and impactor. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars, but Google expects the private sector to do it for less. Will it happen? More to come!

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070913/ap_on_hi_te/google_moon_prize;_ylt=ApRsXATIDbAsWVmPt58_VB6s0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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edited by Barbora Matulova

Labels: Business, CantellTV, Chris Cantell, Christopher Cantell, digital broadcasting, SigEx Foundry, SigEx Telecom

posted by Blog TechSource @ 4:24 AM