MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. -
First it conquered cyberspace. Now, Google is setting its sights on outer space.
The company on Thursday announced the first 10 teams of competitors in its $30 million contest to send a spacecraft back to the moon to gain greater insights into the solar system and to find new sources of clean energy.
The Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) Lunar X Prize contest requires each team--largely composed of scientists and businesspeople--to build a robotic craft that can roam across the moon's surface, beam video, images and data back to Earth and even tap into natural resources.
One bold ambition of the project: using lunar materials to make solar power collectors that can generate carbon-free energy, which is then transmitted to the Earth. This, of course, would fit in nicely with the Mountain View, Calif., company's plan to develop alternative energy sources that are cheaper than coal and far less polluting. (See: " Google Goes Green") At least no one can accuse Google of thinking small.
Google isn't paying the costs for the teams to develop the rockets; it's simply holding out the carrot of a top prize of $20 million to the team that builds a vessel that can land on the moon and accomplish its mission. Each team has to raise the money to construct a spacecraft on its own.
The 10 teams vying to win Google's top prize come from diverse industries and parts of the world. The teams include Astrobotic, a collaboration between Carnegie Mellon University and Raytheon (nyse: RTN - news - people ); Chandah, spearheaded by an energy industry entrepreneur from Texas; Romania's Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association; and Team Italia, a consortium of universities in Italy. Each team is using private funds to develop their robotic spacecrafts.
The contest, announced last fall, is being co-sponsored by the X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit organization that administers competitions to spur the development of technologies that aspire to solve dire problems around the world.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin came up with the idea for the contest after chatting with X Prize Foundation Chief Executive Peter Diamandis and PayPal founder Elon Musk. "It occurred to me that [Google] should be doing new kinds of things in ambitious and unexpected ways," Brin told a group of reporters at Google's headquarters Thursday.
He speculated that Google's contest might get a spacecraft on the moon before the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration does. The company said it will award a cash prize of $20 million by the end of 2012 to the contestant that lands a privately funded craft on the moon, roams the lunar surface for at least 50 meters (164 feet) and transmits a specified set of images and data back to Earth. By contrast, NASA has a deadline of 2020 to get another craft to the moon.
Although Google said the contest has received more than 567 "expressions of interest" from scientists and businesspeople around the world, 10 teams have thus far paid the $10,000 registration fee and have proved that their space vehicles could be functional. Diamandis expects another 10 to 20 teams to register.
In addition to the first-place prize, Google will award $5 million to a runner-up. The company also plans to dole out another $5 million in "bonus prizes," likely spread among several entrants.
The last spacecraft to land on the Moon was NASA's Apollo 12 mission, nearly 40 years ago. Nancy Conrad, the widow of Apollo 12 commander Charles "Pete" Conrad, attended the Google media briefing. "I'm stoked we're going back," she said.
