Tag: Google Lunar X Prize

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Israeli-built lander crashes on moon

Beresheet view of moon
One of the last pictures sent back by the Beresheet lander shows the lunar surface. (SpaceIL Photo)

An Israeli-built lander crashed onto the moon today during its final descent, bringing an unfortunate end to the first privately funded lunar mission.

“We had a failure on the spacecraft,” Opher Doron, general manager of Israel Aerospace Industries’ space division, said during a live webcast of the spacecraft’s landing attempt. “We unfortunately have not managed to land successfully.”

The crash was traced to an apparent engine malfunction. It came a month and a half after the dishwasher-sized lander was sent into space by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a pre-launch logistical assist from Seattle-based Spaceflight.

The Beresheet lander, which took its name from the Hebrew phrase for “In the Beginning,” was funded with nearly $100 million in private money, led by Israeli billionaire Morris Kahn’s $40 million contribution. Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson provided another $24 million for the effort.

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Israeli lunar lander passes pre-launch tests

Israeli lunar lander
SpaceIL’s Beresheet lunar lander is suspended at a payload processing facility in Florida. (SpaceIL Photo via Twitter)

The managers of Israel’s first mission to the moon say their lunar lander has passed a crucial set of tests in preparation for February’s launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with an assist from a Seattle space company.

SpaceIL’s lander — which has been dubbed Beresheet, the Hebrew word for “In the Beginning” — is scheduled for liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida no earlier than Feb. 18.

Mission success would make Israel the fourth nation to execute a soft landing on the moon, following in the footsteps of the United States, Russia and China.

Spaceflight, the launch logistics subsidiary of Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries, brokered Beresheet’s inclusion as a secondary payload on a mission that will send Indonesia’s PSN-6 telecommunications satellite, also known as Nusantara Satu, toward geostationary orbit.

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Israelis say their lander will soon fly to the moon

SpaceIL lander
SpaceIL’s lander is on display in a clean room. (SpaceIL Photo / Eliran Avital)

SpaceIL, an Israeli team that was once a competitor in the now-defunct Google Lunar X Prize, says it will have its lander launched toward the moon in December. The lander will be a secondary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket taking off from Florida, the team said today in a news release. The plan calls for the lander to execute a series of in-space maneuvers, then touch down on the lunar surface next February to transmit imagery and measure the moon’s magnetic field. SpaceIL says about $88 million has been invested in the project to date, mostly from private donors.

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XPRIZE resurrects commercial moon race

Moon Express lander
Moon Express’ MX-1E settles onto the lunar surface. (Moon Express Illustration)

Less than a week after the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize officially expired, its organizers say they’re relaunching it as a non-cash competition to put a privately funded lander on the moon.

They’re also looking for a new sponsor to lend its name, and a fresh promise of pecuniary rewards, to what’s currently known as the Lunar XPRIZE.

XPRIZE’s founder and executive chairman Peter Diamandis said he was “extraordinarily grateful to Google” for funding the original competition between September 2007 and March 31, 2018.

“While that competition is now over, there are at least five teams with launch contracts that hope to land on the lunar surface in the next two years,” he said today in a news release. “Because of this tremendous progress, and near-term potential, XPRIZE is now looking for our next visionary title sponsor who wants to put their logo on these teams and on the lunar surface.”

The new sponsor would be responsible for putting up one or more contingent purses for the competition’s winners, XPRIZE said. In the meantime, XPRIZE will define new parameters for companies to compete for the prize.

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XPRIZE confirms no one will win moon race

Moon rover
A prototype moon rover makes an appearance at the 2007 kickoff of the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition. (XPRIZE Photo)

The organizers for the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize competition acknowledged today that the award for a commercially funded lunar landing will go unwon, despite a decade’s worth of work.

But the California-based XPRIZE foundation’s top executives said they were looking for ways to keep a spotlight on the contest, even after Google’s prize money goes away on March 31.

“This may include finding a new title sponsor to provide a prize purse following in the footsteps of Google’s generosity, or continuing the Lunar XPRIZE as a non-cash competition where we will follow and promote the teams and help celebrate their achievements,” executive chairman Peter Diamandis and CEO Marcus Shingles said in their statement.

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Moon ambitions get a reality check — and a boost

Blue Moon lander
An artist’s conception shows Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander. (Blue Origin Illustration)

Who’s going to the moon? The prospects are looking dimmer for any commercial lunar landings in the short term — but Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture today used a milestone in space history to spotlight its longer-term lunar aspirations.

The bad news is that none of the remaining five contenders for the Google Lunar X Prize is likely to get to the moon in time to win a $20 million award in March.

Google has repeatedly extended the deadline for doing a lunar landing, but CNBC quoted the company as saying there’d be no more extensions beyond March 31.

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XPRIZE teams get more time for moonshots

Moon rover
A prototype moon rover makes an appearance at the 2007 kickoff of the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition. (XPRIZE Photo)

The Google Lunar XPRIZE finalists now have $4.75 million more to shoot for with the moon missions they’re planning, and more time to shoot for the moon as well.

The competition was set up a decade ago to encourage commercial moon exploration, with Google donating the prize money and the nonprofit XPRIZE organization handling the logistics.

A grand prize of $20 million was set aside to the first privately funded team to land a probe on the moon, get it to move at least 500 meters (yards) on the surface, and have it send back high-definition video and images. The second team to accomplish the feat could win $5 million.

As many as 25 teams vied for the prize over the years, but in January the field was whittled down to five: Hakuto, Moon Express, SpaceIL, Synergy Moon and TeamIndus.

The teams were facing a launch deadline of Dec, 31, 2017 – and although all five teams have been saying they could make that deadline, it was shaping up to be a close thing.

Today XPRIZE said the deadline has been reworked, giving teams until March 31, 2018, to complete their missions. The 2017 launch deadline no longer applies, XPRIZE spokesman Eric Desatnik told GeekWire via email.

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Moon Express unveils its lunar roadmap

Moon Express lander
Moon Express’ MX-1E settles onto the lunar surface. (Moon Express Illustration)

Moon Express has laid out the plan it intends to follow to send probes to the surface of the moon and start bringing lunar samples back to Earth by 2020.

The plan calls for completing work on Moon Express’ MX-1E lander and its 3-D-printed PECO rocket engine, setting it on Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle and sending it to the moon by the end of this year.

At least two more missions would follow, heading for the moon’s south polar region in 2019 and 2020.

The Florida-based company’s lunar exploration architecture was unveiled today at a Capitol Hill news conference in Washington, D.C.

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Five teams cleared for X Prize moon race

Image: Lunar lander
An artist’s conception shows Team SpaceIL’s lunar lander. (Credit: SpaceIL)

The organizers of the Google Lunar X Prize competition confirmed that five teams have been cleared to go after the $20 million grand prize, and doled out a total of $1 million to all 16 teams that entered.

These five teams previously reported that they had launch contracts for missions to the moon, and that those deals had received the XPRIZE seal of approval.

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Moon Express’ moonshot is ‘go with funding’

Moon Express lander
An artist’s conception shows Moon Express’ lander extending its robotic arm to take a “selfie” of the spacecraft on the lunar surface with Earth in the background. (Credit: Moon Express)

An executive at Moon Express has been widely quoted as saying his company has reached its funding goal for this year’s planned commercial mission to the lunar surface, thanks to $20 million in new investment.

“We now have all the resources in place to shoot for the moon,” the Florida-based company’s CEO, Bob Richards, said in a statement. “Our goal is to expand Earth’s social and economic sphere to the moon, our largely unexplored eighth continent, and enable a new era of low-cost lunar exploration and development for students, scientists, space agencies and commercial interests.”

Space News quoted Richards as saying that the latest round of investment includes contributions from new and existing investors, including the company’s chairman and co-founder, Seattle-area tech entrepreneur Naveen Jain.

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