Google Offers $20m to First Company to Land on the Moon
There are few moments in history as astounding as the first moon landing. There were of course countless successful space missions after that, but the first spacewalk certainly set the bar high for future space missions.
But apart from launching probes, rockets, and even people into the depths of space, a new race has begun to try and mine minerals from other planets and moons. In face, the race is so fierce that Google have offered a whopping $20 million grand prize to any privately-funded company that lands a robot on Earth's moon, and explores the surface by moving at least 500 metres. The robot then needs to send the high-definition video back to Earth so scientists can dissect the footage further. Oh and they want all of this done by 2015.
If that sounds too difficult, there's still a prize of $5 million, for the second company to complete the same mission, as well as additional bonus objectives such as travelling more than 5km, finding water and discovering traces of man's past adventures on the moon, such as the original Apollo site.
