SpaceIL laid out its mission plans on Wednesday during a news conference in Jerusalem, attended by Weiss and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. At the time, Chang’e 3, China’s rover, was the first probe to land successfully on the moon’s surface in almost four decades and ended a 37-year-long dry spell for craft landings on the moon. Rocket Lab is a privately funded company, with major investors including Khosla Ventures, K1W1, Bessemer Venture Partners and Lockheed Martin.
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GLXP, organized by the XPRIZE foundation and sponsored by Google, is meant to “incentivize space entrepreneurs to create a new era of affordable access to the moon and beyond”.
To claim the $20 million jackpot, the victor must not just land (intact, please), but travel at least 500 meters (547 yds.) and send back video and high definition pictures.
The contract is for five launches, totalling about U.S. $30 million, Daven Maharaj, Moon Express vice president of operations told me on Friday. SpaceIL, the Israeli team in question, has signed with Spaceflight Industries, a company which specializes in space “rideshares”. The lunar deadline is now set at the end of 2017, but a more pressing deadline has been looming for quite a few time. SpaceIL is committed to using the potential prize money to promote science and scientific education in Israel, to ensure that Israel will continue to live up to its reputation of excellence in the field.
The runner up will receive $5 million, with incentive bonuses that could reach another $5 million achievable for things such as surviving a lunar night, which is equal to 14 days on Earth and visiting a landing site of Apollo.
CEO of SpaceIL, Eran Privman has said that the group isn’t focused on the competition, but mentioned they are confident that they can win. According to the present rules, if no team showed evidence of a launch agreement by the end of 2015, the contest would be over. Once the capsule separates from the launcher, it will release the spacecraft.
Once the capsule detaches, a navigation system will guide it toward a safe landing. Engineers in a mission control room will send commands and corrections remotely as needed. The company recently purchased a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to make that possible. It designed Falcon 9 with a two-stage configuration that minimizes the number of events. The breakthrough robotic space vehicle offers multiple applications, including delivery of scientific and commercial payloads to the Moon at a fraction of the cost of conventional approaches. It is working toward that goal under an agreement with NASA.
The Google Lunar X Prize is motivating many small companies around the world like SpaceIL to dream big and aim for the moon.
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Mat & Lyon CreativeNow that SpaceIL has announced its launch contract, the remaining 15 teams have until December 31, 2016, to announce their own launch contracts.
