Competitions: Web Articles
Lunar Lander Competition Awards $2 Million in Prizes | On Orbit
"The race for the $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X PRIZE Challenge (NGLLXPC) incentivized prize purse, funded by NASA and presented by the X PRIZE Foundation, has come to an exciting finish. Masten Space Systems, led by David Masten, will be awarded the top $1 million prize on Nov. 5 in Washington D.C. at the Rayburn House Office Building. This is the largest incentivized prize awarded by the X PRIZE Foundation since the 2004 Ansari X PRIZE competition." Three cheers for those great prizes and may they continue to leverage R&D progress in entrepreneurial space commerce.
Regolith Excavation Challenge | Prize Funding Provided by the NASA Centennial Challenges Program
"Teams from across the country will design and build robotic machines to excavate simulated lunar soil, otherwise known as regolith, in hopes of winning a $750,000 prize funded by the NASA Centennial Challenges program. CSA will provide a Lunar Regolith Simulant Testbed, a sandbox containing a sand-like material that simulates the lunar surface. The testbed is used for various education and outreach activities, such as the Regolith Challenge."
2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Competition Winning Attempts Scheduled
"The X PRIZE Foundation announced today that three teams have registered to make attempts to win the $1.65 million still available in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. The prize program is managed by the X PRIZE Foundation as part of NASA’s Centennial Challenges Program. The competition is designed to accelerate technological developments supporting the commercial creation of vertical take-off and landing rockets with enhanced safety and performance."
What Matters: Audio interview with Peter Diamandis | McKinsey
"In this week’s "What Matters" podcast, we hear from Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation—a nonprofit group focused on driving innovation through large, incentive competitions. In 2004, the foundation awarded the Ansari X PRIZE, a $10 million award for the first private group to build and launch a reusable, manned spacecraft. Diamandis recently spoke with Paul Jansen, a principal in McKinsey’s San Francisco office, about how prizes can spur innovation, create new markets, and address some of the world’s thorniest socioeconomic problems." This link provides an audio and a written record of the interview with Diamandis. Many of the XPrize Foundations prizes have been designed to stimulate private space commerce.
About the Regolith Excavation Challenge | 2008 Results
An update is provided on the 2008 Lunar Regolith Challenge (worth $750K) that was conducted in August. It is a design and performance competition to move a specified amount of simulated lunar material in a specified time to further future lunar resource utilization. There was no winner this year and plans are still evolving for the 2009 Challenge. This challenge, funded by the NASA Centennial Challenges Program is coordinated by CSEWI. The event is co-hosted by the California Space Authority, California Polytechnic State Univ. and the San Luis Obispo College of Engineering. Also three sponsors are listed.
NASA to Open New Competition for Space Transportation Seed Money | Commercial Space Watch
Due to NASA’s termination of its COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) with Rocketplane Kistler due to their inability to meet project milestones, they announced a new competition for cargo transport services to low Earth orbit destinations .