The next race to the moon has begun! The X PRIZE Foundation and Google Inc. today announced the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon. The press release boldly states: “Moon 2.0, the second era of lunar exploration, will not be a quest for “flags and footprints.” This time we will go to the Moon to stay.”
To win the Grand Prize – worth $20 million dollars – a team must successfully:

• Soft land a privately funded spacecraft on the Moon
• Rove on the lunar surface for a minimum of 500 meters
• Transmit a specific set of video, images and data, called a “Mooncast,” back to Earth

The Mooncast consists of digital data that must be collected and transmitted to the Earth composed of the following:

• High resolution 360º panoramic photographs taken on the surface of the Moon
• Self portraits of the rover taken on the surface of the Moon
• Near-real time videos showing the craft’s journey along the lunar surface
• High Definition (HD) video
• Transmission of a cached set of data, loaded on the craft before launch (e.g. first email from the Moon).

Just as the Ansari X Prize led Burt Rutan to build Spaceship One, hopefully someone in the near future will actually be able to pull this off. That would be, in the words of my inner 12 year old, totally sweet.
Via Adam