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| From right, Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, X Prize Foundation chairman and CEO Peter Diamondis, Google co-founder Larry Page,
and X Prize Foundation Vice-Chairman Bob Weiss speak in Los Angeles. Ric Francis/AP |
From Japan and L.A., ventures seek to tread familiar turf: the moon.
After the first Apollo mission, funding appears for a resurgence in moon exploration.
By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the September 17, 2007 edition
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If the idea of sending probes, rovers, and people back to the moon is old hat, you wouldn't know it in Tokyo or Los Angeles.
On Friday, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched a $479-million spacecraft toward the moon. A day earlier, Google and the X-Prize Foundation announced in L.A. a $30 million purse aimed at getting the fledgling alternative spaceflight industry into the lunar act.
Despite a "been-there, done-that" attitude toward lunar exploration among a large proportion of the public, the efforts are the latest in a string of moonstruck projects in the US and overseas since the turn of the millennium.
Nearly 40 years after Neil Armstrong took one small step for man, several high-profile initiatives once again aim to lay the foundation for mankind's return to the moon – an objective President Bush established for the US in 2004. His goal: Put fresh US bootprints on the lunar surface no later than 2020. For its part, Japan's mission, originally slated to launch four years ago, represents the country's attempt to master technologies that will give it valuable chits to bring to the table for future lunar activities, either its own or cooperative projects with other countries, analysts say.
"For nations or for private ventures, the notion of being able to get off the Earth and conduct activities in the solar system – whether it's human settlement, exploration, or economic and technological development – means that you need the challenges of going to another place. The moon is that first place," says Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society in Pasadena, Calif.
Big plans for moon ventures
The grand ambitions have the money and tech savvy to back them up. Japan's project includes an orbiter "mother ship" that will release two smaller satellites – a combination of hardware that the Japanese have billed as the most complicated package of sensors humans have sent to the moon since the US Apollo program, the last one to send astronauts there in 1972.
Of the $30 million in the Google/X-Prize awards, some $20 million will go to the first group that can land and operate a rover on the moon's surface by the end of 2012. The winner can pick up an extra $5 million for exceeding the contest objectives in specific ways.
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