Lunar XPrize Finalists Announced

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The contenders in the international Lunar XPrize have been narrowed down to five finalist teams who will attempt to be the first to launch and land a robot on the moon by the end of the year. XPrize.org, which is offering a grand prize of $20 million sponsored by Google, announced this week that each of the finalists, who were among 16 contestants in 2016 and more than 30 the year prior, were able to obtain launch contracts by the end-of-year deadline. They’ll have until Dec. 31 to send an unmanned lunar lander to the moon, have it travel at least 500 meters and transmit high-definition images and video back to Earth. The contest had originally launched in 2007 with a five-year deadline to make it to the moon, but the viability of the projects resulted in the contest extending its timeframe until this year.

Among the finalists is Moon Express, based at Cape Canaveral, which won launch approval from NASA and the FAA for its lunar rover, which is undergoing testing at Kennedy Space Center. Synergy Moon, a team made up of international members and headquartered in California, says it plans to launch a Neptune 8 rocket with a lander and “at least one rover” off the West Coast. Israeli nonprofit group SpaceIL is developing a small spacecraft it says is “about the size of a dishwasher” that will “hop” on the lunar surface to make the 500-meter requirement. Hakuto, a startup from Japan, designed a four-wheeled rover that will share a launch with finalist Team Indus of India, which also has a small four-wheeled rover that weighs about 11 pounds.

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