Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 10/9/07 Section: News

Media Credit: SARAH CURTISS/AERONEWS NETWORK, © 2007 X Prize Foundation's announcement of the Google Lunar Prize held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, Calif., Sept. 13, 2007.

Media Credit: SARAH CURTISS/AERONEWS NETWORK, © 2007 X Prize Foundation's announcement of the Google Lunar Prize held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, Calif., Sept. 13, 2007.

For many decades the moon has been out of reach for the average person. But it's a new day, and now anyone can build a robot to send into space.

Google Inc. and the X Prize Foundation recently announced a contest where the winner can receive up to $30 million dollars for building a robot and sending it to the moon to perform specific tasks.

The Lunar X Prize contest is open to any private business as well as students and professors.

"The rules of the Google Lunar X Prize require that all teams be at least 90 percent privately funded," said Andrew Pederson, a spokesman for Google. "We would welcome a group of students or professors to participate."

The X Prize Foundation is a nonprofit organization that created the contest Google Inc. is sponsoring.

"The Google Lunar X Prize will create a renewed interest in robotics," said Winncy Du, an associate professor in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

"This international competition will challenge and inspire engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop cost-efficient methods of robotic space exploration," she said. "It will propel the development of new robotic and virtual presence technology."

According to Pederson the contest will officially be over in 2014, unless someone accomplishes the tasks before then.

Some students at SJSU have already taken a big interest in the contest.

"I am a huge fan of the idea, and I applaud Google and the X Prize for coming up with it," said Eric Stackpole a fifth-year mechanical engineering major, who is the president of both the SJSU CubeSat Team and the Amateur Radio Club. "I think that this is the era to be an engineer."

"In a nutshell, the first team to land and accomplish the mission goals receives $20 million," said Becky Lewis, communications specialist for X Prize.

"The grand prize will be awarded to the team that can soft-land a craft on the moon that roams for at least 500 meters and transmits a Moon cast back to earth," she said. "The second prize of $5 million is awarded if the first team lands but does not accomplish the mission goals, or if another team has already landed and accomplished the mission goals. The bonus $5 million is available to any competing team."

The bonus can be won by completing additional tasks while on the moon, Lewis said.

The contest is open to anyone that receives less than 10 percent government funding. A professor at Carnegie Mellon University has already begun organizing a team, said Jean Levasseur, a communications coordinator for X Prize.

Some SJSU engineering students are not aware of the contest, but they are busy with other aerospace projects, said Professor Burford Furman of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

"We have had a number of SJSU Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering students working on innovative space-related projects," Furman said.

Some of the projects include the Spartnik satellite, other micro-satellites and possibly in the near future, a lunar observatory, he said.

The X Prize contest would take a huge amount of effort, he said, but he was certain the engineering students would be strong contributors to a team if there were one locally.

"Obviously, this would require a bit of planning, organization and funding, and ideally it would involve both graduate and undergraduate students," said Associate Professor Du.

She said a project of such magnitude would need an extensive amount of support from faculty members.

"This would need to be a multidisciplinary effort with engineering students from mechanical and aerospace, electrical, computer, material science and even students from mathematics and physics," Du said.

The cost alone would be a big challenge. Furman estimated the project would cost several hundred-million dollars and would take many years.

"I think that the Google Lunar X Prize may seem intimidating to a lot of people because when they picture going to the moon, they picture the Saturn V rocket and the tens of thousands of people involved with the space program of the 1960s and 1970s," said mechanical engineering student, Eric Stackpole.

Though the contest seems like a larger than life task, Stackpole remained optimistic about the possibilities.

"The key to accomplishment is not the manpower or finance. It's the innovation," he said. "Just one good idea can spark a flame with limitless potential. There are a lot of very smart people at this university, so I think that with the right conditions the Moon could be within our reach."

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