The Google Lunar X prize, which aims to award $30m (£19.6m) to the first private company to land a spacecraft on the Moon, has entered its final phase.
An Israeli company, SpaceIL, has submitted a signed launch contract with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to the competition’s organisers.
This has triggered a deadline of 31 December 2017 for the moonshot to be attempted. SpaceIL is a non-profit organisation founded at the end of 2010. The competition’s organisers had been threatening to scrap the Lunar X-Prize at the end of this year because of what they saw as a lack of progress from the 16 competing teams.
But SpaceIL’s launch contract changes that, and places pressure on the other teams, who must now present their own launch contracts by the end of 2016 in order to remain in the race.
Two other contenders – both US companies – will pose some stiff competition for SpaceIL.
Moon Express signed its own launch contract on 30 September with a New Zealand start-up company called Rocket Lab, but has yet to submit the contract to the X-Prize organisers for verification.
Astrobotic Technology Inc plans to use a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, similar to SpaceIL, but has yet to sign and submit the contract.
Once on the lunar surface, the spacecraft must explore at least 500m and return high resolution images to Earth to win the prize.
While most contestants plan to do this with a lunar rover, SpaceIL’s craft has springy legs which will enable it to hop about.
