The X PRIZE Foundation Website Gets a Redesign

The X PRIZE Foundation’s website had maintained a design that was created in September of 2006 and after a much needed facelift, we finally launched a re-design a few weeks ago. In this post I’ll provide some details about the process and share some resources we used.

First a little background. I’m Mark Krynsky and I joined the Foundation as a contractor in April of 2007 to migrate several of their static websites to be built atop a CMS platform to make them more dynamic and easier for staff to publish content. In addition to that we would launch a new website for the Google Lunar X PRIZE announcement in September of 2007 on this platform. After considering several options including commercial off the shelf systems and a custom built one, we chose an open source CMS called Drupal. It was a very challenging project that I could write a whole separate post on but we successfully launched all the sites.

So although we overhauled the backend of the main site, the design stayed the same. I continued doing contract work for the website and in October of 2008 I joined the Foundation as Manager of Web Production. We continued to add on new pieces of content and functionality but the site began to look Frankensteinish so we started planning a re-design. We created an internal survey, started documenting content and functionality to add, and had several meetings to discuss this. We quickly realized that our new vision would require a very large undertaking. So with limited resources available, and wanting to do something quickly we took a new smaller iterative approach.

In mid November of 2009 we decided to focus on re-designing our home page and several other design changes but maintain the current navigation, pages, and other content for the most part. Our goal was to incorporate some of the higher impact changes requested from the feedback we received that could be completed in a short timeframe. We fast tracked this with hopes of launching it in January 2010.

The process involved creating a simple document outlining the content of the new page along with a graphic mockup. After a few rounds of reviewing, a design concept was agreed upon. At the heart of the new redesign was a new featured stories section. We researched several tools to implement it and selected the Frontpage Slideshow which offers some great options along with a module for Drupal integration.

The rest of the design consisted of creating cleaner ways of displaying existing content and highlighting some new areas such as our PRIZE groups and videos from our in-house production team's YouTube channel.


click image to visit the new X PRIZE Foundation Website

We launched the new redesign on time and on a very small budget. The Frontpage Slideshow module was only $30 and besides the in house content and assets created, I worked with just one developer on this project. I've always been very mindful of leveraging free or low cost services and open source software for web projects. This has become especially important now that I'm at a non-profit trying to maximize a tight budget.

We have many more changes planned for the website over the coming months. I look forward to sharing more insight on what goes on behind the scenes of our web production department and share more details on the tools and services that bring our sites to life.

XPRIZE News 2009: A Year in Review

2009 was a great year for X PRIZE and the media coverage the Foundation received helped to mark some memorable events and moments - including our five-year anniversary! From national outlets like the Today Show and the New York Times to the international WIRED UK, the X PRIZE message was pumped through airwaves, documented in newspapers and pictured in magazines. In no particular order, we’ve compiled a few X PRIZE media moments of 2009. We hope you have already had a chance to see, but if not, enjoy!

FOUNDATION

An Online Sensation

Perhaps one of the most exciting pieces that featured X PRIZE was Bloomberg News’, the “X PRIZE Effect.” The segment was part of Bloomberg’s “Innovators” series and provided an up-close account of the Lunar Lander challenge, including interviews with some of the teams. It also told the X PRIZE story, highlighting X PRIZE CEO/Chairman, Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, and his inspiration and driving force for creating the Foundation.

X PRIZE Makes an English Entrance with Wired UK

We love it when you can flip through a magazine to find a story about X PRIZE, but we love it even more when our signature “X” lands on the cover! And that’s just what happened with the October 2009 issue of Wired UK. In this cover story, writer Mathew Honan goes “Inside the X PRIZE” for a comprehensive profile piece on the Foundation, our mission, what we’ve accomplished and what to expect (not to mention some very cool photos of Peter floating mid-air). It later spotlights the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE, chronicling a few teams and their accomplishments in the competition to date.

Throughout the year, X PRIZE was also featured in outlets like the Boston Globe, Discover Magazine, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Several X PRIZE stories also featured profile pieces on Peter, including Entrepreneur Magazine, Philanthropy News Digest and Voice of America. Of course, every story about X PRIZE isn’t just about the Foundation. Each of our prizes also generate coverage on their own.

PRIZE TALK

Writing DNA

The $10 Million Archon X PRIZE for Genomics is always a hot topic in the science world. In April 2009, the Economist’s “Getting Personal” explored genome sequencing. Other outlets like CNN and the Scientific American discussed Knome’s (a genetic firm based in MA) $68,000 genome sequencing auction, which was held on e-bay, with proceeds benefitting our genomics prize.


The New Race to Space

2009 was an important year for the space community as it marked the 40th Anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing. Naturally, science publications paid tribute to this event and the $30 Million Google Lunar X PRIZE was included in such pieces as seen in BBC Focus and the Explorers Journal, to name a couple. The prize made additional headlines throughout the year in publications like the Asia Times, Newsweek Poland, and was often discussed on MSNBC.com and Space.com.

Lunar Landers Rake in Millions

This year’s Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X PRIZE Challenge was a rocket showdown not to be missed! Outlets like Discovery News, Los Angeles Times and MSNBC closely followed Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space Systems and Unreasonable Rocket as they worked rapidly against an impending deadline in their respective fights for that $1 Million prize purse. In the end, Masten Space Systems claimed the prize with their rover “Xoie,” in a sweet victory putting them over the moon (no pun intended).

On the Fast Track to Green

The $10 Million Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE had a busy, successful year and outlets like Popular Mechanics, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Wired were there to capture events, new partnerships and team highlights as they unfolded. Perhaps you caught the Auto Prize on the Today Show in October? If not, click here to view!

As mentioned above, this is just a quick glimpse of the media attention X PRIZE received in 2009. We look forward to see where we’ll land in 2010. Shall we revisit the Ansari days and land on another cover of TIME? Perhaps a documentary? A stint on Oprah? The possibilities are endless, but as long as you keep reading and hearing about us, we know we’re doing our job!

To view a sample of X PRIZE media coverage visit our press album on our Facebook page!

By: Valerie Arias, Associate, Communications

Alliances Takes us Back to School with the Newly Launched X PRIZE Lab at UW

It’s a new year, the holiday break is over and that means back to school. Most students aren’t very anxious to hit the books but there IS one group of excited students at the University of Washington Evans School of Public Affairs. For them, the New Year marks the launch of the X PRIZE LAB at UW. For those of you who don’t know, the X PRIZE labs leverage the academic resources at top universities to provide an incubator for research and teaching on incentive prizes and prize philanthropy. You may ask, “What does that mean, exactly?” Well, during the winter semester, students will hear from leading innovators and philanthropists that will introduce the use of prize philanthropy and innovation to solve some of humanity’s greatest challenges. Exciting speakers that are confirmed include: Peter Diamandis of the X PRIZE Foundation, John Stanton and Bradley Horwitz of Trilogy Partners, Stewart Parker of Targeted Genetics, Nelson Del Rio, and Mark Emmert of UW. Then, in the spring, students will take the knowledge gained from the speakers to create and propose designs for new X PRIZEs.

The UW lab is the second X PRIZE lab of its kind, the first at MIT. The X PRIZE Lab @ MIT was established in 2007 and has successfully established itself as a unique academic center for the study of innovation and entrepreneurship by engaging MIT students and faculty to explore how incentive prizes drive resolution of the grand challenges that face humanity. Last weekend the X PRIZE Lab@MIT held a special workshop, Brain-Computer Interfaces: Igniting a Revolution, which discussed what it would be like to create a direct connection between the human brain and the world’s most powerful computers. Special guests included Ed Boyden, director of the MIT Synthetic Neurobiology Group and Ray Kurzweil, Chancellor of Singularity University, an interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity’s grand challenges (SU was also co-founded by our very own Peter Diamandis). We are excited about all of the work that the X PRIZE Lab@MIT has done and we look forward to reporting to you all of the great things the UW lab will produce.

By: Lindsey Burris, Executive Assistant, Alliances

Ringing in 2010 with our NeXt PRIZE Blog

The new year (not to mention a new decade) brings changes to many things…including the NeXt PRIZE Blog! Beginning next week, you will see weekly blog updates…and maybe, a blog or two in between :)

So what’s to expect from the forthcoming blogs? Well, we thought it would be fun to share the “behind-the-scenes” stuff, in addition to some of the things that interest us here at X PRIZE. Each week, a different department will share their thoughts….this can range from events and activities in their department, a newsworthy item, or even a profile piece on one of the members of their team. Our goal is to have each department give a little insight so that you can have a better understanding of the X PRIZE world.

To jumpstart this new venture, we thought a little overview of the Foundation’s operations might help. Here goes!

The Foundation is located in Los Angeles – more specifically Playa Vista, which is nestled between LAX and Marina del Rey (a coastal community filled with yachts, bike trails and dinner cruises). Being about two minutes from the beach, we are pretty lucky to see some amazing sunsets just about any night of the week. Last night’s was exceptionally beautiful.

There are approximately 50 people who work at our headquarters, not to mention our consultants (and other employees) who are spread across the country in cities like New York, Chicago, Detroit, Boston and D.C. (maybe 10 or so). The Foundation is divided into eight departments. Below is a little breakdown that gives a little info on our departments, their roles and how they all fit into the bigger X PRIZE picture.

Alliances
Recognize these names? Arianna Huffington, Dean Kamen, Will Wright, Ray Kurzweil, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt….these are a few of our XPF supporters and what a fantastic group they are! Our Alliances department is responsible for connecting the X PRIZE with individuals and other Foundations so that we (being a non-profit) can be funded. They work hard to secure donors and align X PRIZE with the right people. This department is constantly on the road!

Archon X PRIZE for Genomics
Launched in October 2006, the goal of the $10 Million Archon X PRIZE for Genomics is to develop radically new technology that will dramatically reduce the time and cost of sequencing genomes, and accelerate a new era of predictive and personalized medicine. This prize technically falls under our Life Sciences Prize Group, which manages this prize.

Communications
The public face of X PRIZE. We’re the ones who get the Foundation in the news, send out the press releases and handle all other media relations. We are also responsible for internal communications (like our monthly newsletter) and fun activities like social media (thank YOU for giving us an audience).

Creative Services
Our most visual department! Creative services are the great people who are in charge of video production (have you visited our YouTube site?), events and web. Put simply - our team rocks.

Marketing & Sponsorship
This is another department that is always on the go! This team works hard to generate corporate sponsorships – both for the Foundation overall and individual prizes and departments. In the marketing sector, they are responsible for items like branding, collateral and Foundation messaging.

Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE
The goal of the PIAXP is to inspire a new generation of viable, super-efficient vehicles that help break our addiction to oil and stem the effects of climate change. Be ready to read and hear a lot about this prize this year…we will crown a winner in 2010!

Prize Development
This department is one of a kind. These guys are tasked with the awesome job of developing and shaping future X PRIZEs. Their work is extremely crucial and they are constantly flushing out new ideas, new designs, new structures, etc. Our office is right next door and it can be safely said that this department is definitely a fun and exciting place to be.

Space Prizes
Because of the wild success of the Ansari X PRIZE, people most associate the X PRIZE with Space. So this is a very popular department – and rightfully, so! Under the Space umbrella, there is the operation of the $30 Million Google Lunar X PRIZE, as well as the management of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X PRIZE Challenge. Not to mention, their awesome online community!

So there you have it! Hopefully, this provided a good overview of the Foundation. Stay tuned for next’s week’s blog…coming from…(drum roll please)…Alliances!

In the meantime, keep up with us on Facebook and Twitter – let’s continue to spread the word about X PRIZE!

Until next post!

Commercial Spaceflight for the Rest of Us - Congratulations to Virgin Galactic

By Peter H. Diamandis

Chairman/CEO, X PRIZE Foundation

Today Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites rolled out SpaceShipTwo (SS2) a commercial passenger carrying spaceship derived from the winning ship which captured the $10M Ansari X PRIZE (www.xprize.org) for spaceflight in 2004. While SpaceShipOne (SS1) carried only one pilot and two passengers, the much larger SS2 will be flown by two pilots with seats for six paying passengers.

Five years ago, 20,000 people gathered at the Mojave Air & Space Port to watch as Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites, backed by Paul Allen, accomplished what many considered impossible – building and flying a privately funded, privately piloted spaceship, twice, to altitudes above 100 kilometers. On that fateful day, October 4th, when the ship successfully flew its second flight into space, it carried on it the Virgin Logo and a pledge from Richard Branson to fund a commercial version to carry the paying public into space. Well, here we are. The commercial version is now built and will soon start test flights. While the project is a few years behind schedule, it has made incredible strides. Branson and Will Whitehorn (the CEO of Virgin Galactic (www.virgingalactic.com)) have committed hundreds of millions of dollars to get it to this point and everyone is the space community is very thankful.

Equally of note to the hardware rollout, is the confirmation of the marketplace. Tens of thousands of people have gone online to register for a future seat, and some 250 of them have put down the full $200,000 deposit to be amongst the first to fly.

A new era of private spaceflight is unfolding in a very similar fashion to the early days of aviation. In the decades following the Wright Brothers, “tourism flights” were the primary mechanism by which those early aeronauts earned their living. Barn-storming, as it was called, offered an individual the opportunity to pay a handsome sum (typically a month’s wages) to fly to the death-defying altitude of 5,000 feet from which he/she could view their town from the air. Soon, barnstorming gave way to real aviation businesses such as airmail and passenger point-to-point carriage.

In the same fashion, a number of commercial providers, in addition to Virgin Galactic, will offer space tourism flights in the years ahead. These flights will then be followed by flights carrying scientific experiments and flights conducting astronaut training.

So who else is building vehicles and selling seats? First it should be noted that Space Adventures (www.spaceadventures.com) has been carrying privately paying passengers to orbit, to the International Space Station, for the past 9 years using the Russian Soyuz (Disclosure: I am a co-Founder and Managing Director of Space Adventures). Space Adventures has also sold over 100 seats for future suborbital flights at a ticket price of $98,000. In addition to Virgin Galactic and Space Adventures, three other companies fit prominently in this era of private spaceflight. John Carmack, CEO of Armadillo Aerospace (www.armadilloaerospace.com) and creator of the video games ‘Quake’ & ‘Doom’ is developing a passenger carrying suborbital vertical take-off/landing ship. His vehicle is a derivative of the ship which was one of the two winners in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X PRIZE Challenge (Masten Space was the other winner). In addition, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com has started a space exploration company called Blue Origin which has been cloaked in secrecy for the past 5 years. “Blue” as it’s called, is focusing on a variety of human carrying designs, the first of which is a vertical take-off, vertical landing sub-orbital ship. Blue is also rumored to be working on orbital flight as well. The third prominent player is SpaceX (www.spacex.com), founded by PayPal Founder, Elon Musk. SpaceX is developing orbital passenger carrying capability using the Dragon Capsule, which will fly about the Falcon-9 booster to orbit carrying future Astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA. The first test flight of Dragon/Falcon-9 is scheduled for February 2010.

How cheap could a seat get? First we need to distinguish between sub-orbital and orbital flights. Getting to orbit (i.e. going completely around planet Earth in a 90-minute orbit) is approximately 50-times harder than just going up into space and back down to the Earth on a suborbital flight. Today, Virgin Galactic (a suborbital provider) is selling seats at $200,000. Neither Armadillo or Blue Origin have announced seat prices. But theoretically, in my opinion, we could likely see the price per seat for sub-orbital flights drop rapidly over the next decade to under $50,000 per person. In the orbital world, today, Space Adventures offers a seat to orbit aboard the Russian Soyuz for about $45M+. The first orbital passenger, Dennis Tito, spent $20M and the latest Space Adventures customer, Guy Laliberte, paid in excess of $40M. If all goes well, in the decades ahead, I hope we’ll see the price return to $20M and eventually to a price under $5M per person.

I’d like to also point out how magical it is that SS1 and SS2 are being designed and built by a small group of designers enabled by incredible technology. While it once took the wealth and resources of a nation to fly into space, it is now possible for a smart and dedicated team to build such technology. In the case of SpaceShipTwo, special recognition to Burt Rutan, Scaled CEO, Doug Shane, Scaled designers, Jim Tighe, Bob Morgan, Matt Stinemetze, and Marc Zeitlin and Scaled Flight Test Operations Chief, Pete Siebold.

Ultimately, it’s easy to dream and talk about spaceflight, but it comes down to those who put up their wealth, reputations and time. It is for this reason that today I praise Richard Branson, Will Whitehorn, Burt Rutan, Paul Allen and the Ansari Family for their role in SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo. We all share a mutual desire and vision to enable the day when tens of thousands of people will be traveling beyond the Earth on a regular basis.

So, congratulations to the Virgin and Scaled teams for today’s success. I wish you the best of luck in the months ahead as SpaceShipTwo enters into its test flight, and look forward to its first commercial flight in the near future.

Most Valuable Real Estate in the Solar System
Water on Lunar South Pole

By: Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman/CEO, X PRIZE Foundation

Today’s announcement by NASA of significant water on the south pole of the Moon is scientifically critical, economically astounding and extremely important for the long-term future of humanity. Further, this finding now defines the most “valuable real estate in the solar system.”

On October 9th, the LCROSS collision, run by NASA Ames, crashed into the depths of a permanently shadowed crater on the south pole of the Moon. From a scientific point of view, the debris plume resulting from this impact has been analyzed by scientists during the past month, and the results show a significant quantity of water. We now know that the water can be found in the permanently shadowed caters of the Lunar South Pole. This water is probably the remnants of comet collisions with the lunar surface. Likely there may be billions of tons of water, water that can be used to produce rocket fuel or to support future human outposts.
From an economic point of view, water on the Moon is the equivalent of finding “gold in the hills of California.” Translation… there is the potential for a California gold rush to hit the space nations in the years ahead. It may be that governments and/or companies will seek to be first to the ice-fields of the Lunar South Pole and make a claim.

So what’s so interesting about water on the Moon? After all it’s in boundless supplies on Earth. The value of water is its actual physical location on the Moon, a place that is very expensive to travel to. The utility of the water is both as a propellant for rockets and for the maintenance of human life in space. With sufficient water on the Moon, solar energy can be used to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is of course critical for humans to breath and the water important for us to drink. As it turns out, hydrogen (H2) & oxygen (O2) together are one of the most efficient propellants we know. The Space Shuttle Main Engines (some of the most powerful rocket engines in existence), for example, burn O2 and H2 to blast our astronauts off the Earth into orbit. You can think of water as the petroleum of spaceflight… rather than oil that powers our cars, H2 and O2 powers our rocketships.

Today’s launch costs are unfortunately extremely expensive. On the average it costs something on the order of $20,000 per pound to get supplies into low-Earth orbit (where the Int’l Space Station is located) and, optimistically, 10x to 20x that cost, or approximately $400,000 per pound to land something on the Moon’s surface.

So the cost of transporting water to the lunar surface, or oxygen, or hydrogen is about $400,000 per pound or $25,000 per ounce… about twenty-five times the price of gold today!

Revealing water in significant quantities on the Moon could truly be a turning point in space exploration. Who will set up the first water mining plants? Given low-cost availability of water, hydrogen and oxygen, what type of off-Earth economies and exploration will this enable? The question is not too dissimilar to those questions asked when oil was discovered buried deep under the Earth or under the oceans. We eventually designed the technology to mine and extract this precious resource. It’s what we do as humans and entrepreneurs.

The south pole of the Moon has another very important attribute in addition to water, namely the existence of small mountain peaks that are constantly in sunlight, 28 days out of the Lunar cycle and referred to as the “peaks of eternal light.” These peaks which are in the plane of the ecliptic (the plane that the Earth rotates around the sun) will allow for constant illumination of solar panels and heating of the spacecraft. The reason this is important is because the temperature on the Moon plummets from +100 degrees Centigrade to -150 degrees Centigrade as the Moon rotates into and out of direct sunlight.

The proximate location of newly discovered ice-fields, next to these “peaks of eternal light,” will allow for the creation of fuel depots where water is mined and then solar energy is used to break it down to Hydrogen and Oxygen for rocket fuel (a process known as hydrolysis). Think of this location as the ‘Saudi Oil fields’ of the solar system. I could imagine that some governments or corporations will want to race to this real estate and stake their claim in the decade ahead.

I’m particularly excited for all of the teams building vehicles for the Google Lunar X PRIZE (www.googlelunarxprize.org/). This is a $30 million competition funded by Google and operated by the X PRIZE Foundation. We’ve offered up a large cash bounty for the first team to privately build and land a robot on the surface of the Moon that can travel, send back photos and video. Think of these vehicles as a low-cost ‘prospector’ looking for information and valuable data, as well as the companies constructing the shovels and picks on the bleeding edge of this potential boom.

Thus far, 21 teams from 11 nations have registered to compete. When they are successful they will demonstrate the ability to reliably travel to the lunar surface and explore for less than a tenth of the current costs envisioned by government programs. Everyone will benefit and these Google Lunar Teams will be on the cutting edge of a gold rush.

If you’ve been wondering where the next Gold Rush is going to take place, look up at the night sky to our closest celestial neighbor. The next economic boom might just be a mere 240,000 miles away on the bella luna.

NASA’S LANDMARK DISCOVERY OF WATER ICE ON THE MOON RAISES STAKES FOR GOOGLE LUNAR X PRIZE

Contact: Michael Timmons 310-741-4884

michael.timmons@xprize.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NASA’S LANDMARK DISCOVERY OF WATER ICE ON THE MOON RAISES STAKES FOR GOOGLE LUNAR X PRIZE

Groundbreaking detection will enable further exploration on and beyond the Moon

Playa Vista, Calif. (November 13, 2009) - A team of scientists from NASA announced today that significant amounts of water ice have been found at the Moon’s South Pole. This landmark finding, achieved through analysis of the material blasted from the lunar surface as part of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission, provides a great boon to an international community of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs cultivating a new era of lunar exploration. The announcement also builds upon the groundbreaking research conducted by both NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization, which recently revealed trace amounts of water distributed across the Moon’s surface, previously thought to be more dehydrated that the driest deserts of Earth.

The confirmation of the presence of water ice on the surface of the Moon is a game-changing discovery for space exploration. The Moon, already a hotly pursued destination of space agencies and private companies from around the world, becomes even more desirable with today’s news. With ready supplies of ice, future robotic spacecraft or human astronaut crews could generate not only drinking water but also gaseous hydrogen and oxygen —excellent propellants that could be used for further space exploration beyond the Moon.

The discovery also provides new support for a private race to return to the Moon. The Google Lunar X PRIZE, a $30 million incentive prize created and operated by the X PRIZE Foundation, challenges privately funded teams from around the globe to send robots to explore the lunar surface and return high resolution video and imagery back to the Earth. The prize program includes a Water Detection Bonus, which pays additional prize money to teams that use robots on the lunar surface to provide confirmation of the presence of water ice. Until today’s announcement, it was uncertain if this bonus would be obtainable.

“The presence of significant quantities of ice on the lunar surface catapults the Moon from an interesting waypoint to a critical launching pad for humanity’s exploration of the cosmos,” said X PRIZE CEO and Chairman Peter Diamandis. “We’re entering a new era of lunar exploration – ‘Moon 2.0,’ in which an international group of companies and governments will use the ice and other unique resources of the Moon to help us expand the sphere of human influence, and to help us monitor and protect the Earth.”

The success of the LCROSS mission is just the latest in a recent string of lunar probes. In the past two years, NASA, the Indian Space Research Organization, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, and China’s National Space Administration have each placed satellites in orbit around the Moon. With more than twenty teams from eleven countries registered to compete in the Google Lunar X PRIZE, we may be only a few years away from the first private lunar mission, and the first spacecraft to explore the lunar surface since 1976.

“We congratulate the team at NASA and the brilliant engineers and scientists at the other space agencies who have made the discovery announced today possible,” said X PRIZE Foundation Senior Director for Space Prize William Pomerantz. “We’re confident that these exciting findings will inspire a new generation of lunar pioneers to continue to transcend the boundaries of what was previously believed to be possible.”


ABOUT THE X PRIZE FOUNDATION

The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational nonprofit prize institute whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. In 2004, the Foundation captured world headlines when Burt Rutan, backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, built and flew the world’s first private vehicle to space to win the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE. The Foundation has since launched the $10 million Archon X PRIZE for Genomics, the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, and the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE. The Foundation is creating and conducting competitions in four prize groups: Exploration (Space and Oceans), Life Sciences, Energy & Environment, and Education & Global Development. The Foundation is widely recognized as the leader in fostering innovation through competition. For more information, please visit www.xprize.org.

ABOUT THE GOOGLE LUNAR X PRIZE

The $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE is an unprecedented international competition that challenges and inspires engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration. 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, explore the lunar surface by moving at least 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 the prize expires on December 31st, 2014. For more information about the Google Lunar X PRIZE, please visit www.googlelunarxprize.org.