Google lunar X prize

Google is at it again ! This time around , it has sponsored a whopping 30 million US $ (almost 120 Crores of Indian Rs) to create the Google lunar X prize. The mission ? Simple, create your own spacecraft , create your own rover and hit the moon !

The whole idea originates from the X prize foundation famous for creating challenging competitions that spark innovation. The most famous one till date was the Ansari X prize which challenged people to build a sub orbital space flight. It was won by Burt Rutan in 2004, who created the SpaceShipOne.

This time the foundation has opened the lunar frontier. The teams have to be entirely privately funded and surprisingly enough ,a good number of teams have already signed up. These include American universities like CMU and a good number of private space agencies across the world. I would seriously love to see our self-obsessed IITs participating in it. It would not only give them a good opportunity to prove their technical worth and project execution capabilities , but open a window for quality branding as well.

But yep, Indians are definitely not too far behind. Adil Rahim Jafry , a Houston based entrepreneur and CEO of Tara Energy has created a team titled 'Chandah' and is amongst the initial 10 teams to sign up for the competition. Though he hasn't finalized much of the details on how to go about it, I am really impressed by his spirit of creating sustainable energy solutions from outer space.

You can catch more details of the competition here & about team Chandah here.
The youtube channel for X prize foundation is here