Exploration Prize Group

The goal of the Exploration Prize Group is to expand the use of space, the ocean and other unexplored frontiers in order to improve life on Earth and extend life beyond the confines of land. We believe we can achieve these objectives by researching space and Earth’s oceans, accessing and conserving their resources, catalyzing private, non-governmental activity, and tapping into our innate wonder about the Earth, the Universe and our place within each.

Active

The $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE is igniting a new era of lunar exploration by offering the largest international incentive prize of all time. A total of $30 million in prizes are available to the first privately funded teams to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon and have that robot travel 500 meters over the lunar surface and send images and data back to the Earth. Since its launch, NASA has also offered a complementary $30 million in contracts to those who successfully land on the lunar surface and meet certain scientific objectives. To learn more, click here.

This prize is made possible by a generous grant from Google.

Awarded

Awarded October 2004

The $10 million Ansari X PRIZE was a competition to build a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the earth's surface twice within two weeks. The $10 million purse was won by famed aerospace designer Burt Rutan and his company, Scaled Composite. Together, 26 teams from seven nations spent more than $100 million to win the prize. Since SpaceShipOne won the prize, there has been more than $1.5 billion dollars in public and private expenditure in support of the private spaceflight industry. To learn more, click here.

This prize was made possible by a generous grant from the Ansari family.

Awarded December 2009

The $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X CHALLENGE, offered as a unique partnership between NASA, Northrop Grumman, and the X PRIZE Foundation, was the foundation’s first “X CHALLENGE”. The competition offered a total of $2 million in prizes for companies who could safely and repeatedly demonstrate vertical takeoff and landing of rockets here on Earth while following a flight path that demanded the same capabilities and control as a rocket-powered voyage from lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon and back. Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace each claimed prize money through the program, which marked the largest incentive award made by NASA in history. To learn more, click here.

This prize was made possible by generous grants from Northrop Grumman and NASA Centennial Challenges.

Concepts Under Consideration

The following is a collection of ideas that have been submitted to us.  If you or your company would like to take an idea to the next level by sponsoring one of these concepts, click here.

• Asteroid Deflection
• Beamed Power Propulsion
• Crater Exploration
• Deep Human Submersible
• Electric Aviation
• Lunar Lander
• Ocean Explorer Platform
• Ocean Floor Mapping
• Ocean pH Sensor
• Orbital Debris Removal
• Personal Electric Autonomous Air Transporter
• Reaction Engine
• Suborbital
• Wolfram Physics

Concepts Under Consideration

Asteroid Deflection

Thousands of Near Earth Objects (NEOs) exist, but worldwide efforts to catalogue and track these capture only a fraction of them. Historical impacts have had collision forces exceeding a nuclear bomb, causing massive destruction and climate change. While the likelihood of future events is not large, the ramifications could be devastating. Teams competing in the Asteroid Deflection competition will select a target asteroid at least 50 meters in length in an orbit that is not Earth-crossing. The teams must next predict how they will alter the path of the asteroid, causing a deviation in the asteroid’s path of one Earth diameter over a one-year period. The winner of the competition will be the team that then alters the path of that asteroid in a controlled fashion that is within 99.999% accuracy of the predicted path.

Beamed Power Propulsion

Nearly all launches to date have relied on chemical propulsion, carried on board the vehicle, and thereby sharply reducing payload mass fraction. Beamed power offers a radically alternative launch strategy. Payload launch costs to orbit will drop by a factor of 50 or more. The goal is to launch a 10 Kg payload to a 30Km altitude, deriving 100% of its energy from a ground-based beamed power system. The system must also be reusable and repeatable within 24 hours.

Crater Exploration

The recent discovery of water in the permanently shadowed craters on the moon opens massive potential opportunities for exploration, research and business development. This competition would provide a key hardware element for supporting lunar discovery, and would draw public attention to the opportunities presented by lunar water. Teams competing must build a robotic rover system that is capable of traversing to a mock crater ridge from 100 meters away using 100% solar energy. Teams must then explore the inside of the crater using the robotic rover, a sub-rover or deployed sensors.

Deep Human Submersible

We know more about the surface of Mars than the depths of the Earth’s seas, yet no vehicles currently exist for extended human operations at full ocean depths. Success in this competition will result in increased human access to the ocean depths for science and exploration, with substantially improved capabilities for both. The goal is to build and demonstrate a submersible system capable of carrying three people (or equivalent mass & volume) to the deepest ocean in a safe, useful, and repeatable fashion.

Electric Aviation

World aviation burns 200 million gallons of fuel each day - or about the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool every 5 minutes. A new class of all-electric aircraft would help minimize our dependence on fossil fuels. The Electric Aviation competition would an annual cross-country race rewarding breakthroughs in electric aviation. The winning team will be the one that beats the previous year’s best time by a set margin. The goal is to develop a new generation of fast, safe, long-endurance electric aircraft that will reduce noise and dependence on fossil fuels.

Lunar Lander

The hardware developed for the Apollo missions used 1960’s technologies, and a great deal of the institutional knowledge gained in that era has been lost. The demonstration of successful new technologies can bolster future lunar exploration, as well as support suborbital research and other markets. This competition would accelerate technologies needed for exploration beyond low earth orbit, and would support the early development of commercial solutions for this market. The goal would be to build a Lunar Lander that can fly for at least six minutes while carrying a 25 kg payload.

Ocean Explorer Platform

We currently know more about the surfaces of many extraterrestrial bodies than our own oceans, and have no effective platforms or sensors for improving that knowledge. This technology will leverage breakthroughs in energy storage, data processing, sensing and communications to bring state-of-the-art science back to the seas, thereby increasing our basic scientific literacy for climate models, biosphere analysis, and exploration. The result of an Ocean Explorer Platform competition would be the development of a small, low-power autonomous undersea vehicle that can derive three-dimensional maps of oceanographic data.

Ocean Floor Mapping

We lack high-resolution maps of nearly 75% of the planet’s surface. Improved knowledge of the ocean floor will improve exploration, navigation, basic geological discovery and economic development. The winning team must demonstrate a repeatable and scalable method to map a specified region of the ocean floor within a defined period of time. The mapping method must provide high-resolution images as well as thermal, current, and sample data.

Ocean pH Sensor

In this competition, teams will develop small, low-power sensors that focus on pH data acquisition to help improve the current models of climate change and broaden our knowledge of biosphere ecology. The winning team will be the one with the highest accuracy during a date-certain 3-month deployment. The competition will be staged in a site (<2,000m depth) that is both scientifically relevant and technically challenging.

Orbital Debris Removal

Millions of pieces of debris are currently orbiting Earth at altitudes that pose a danger to satellites and human spacecraft. The threat from such debris is predicted to rise 50% in the coming decade and quadruple in the next 50 years. Large object collisions are particularly dangerous, due to the ensuing creation of additional debris. Teams competing in the Orbital Debris competition must select a target piece of orbital debris and either de-orbit the debris or move the debris in a predicted and accurate fashion to a new orbit deemed non-threatening by a panel of expert judges. The first team to complete this task will be determined the winner.

Personal Electric Autonomous Air Transporter

Congestion is growing in ground transportation, which could be partially remedied by more fully utilizing 3-dimensional airspace. However, aircraft are currently available only for long-distance operations. Autonomy improves reaction time and accuracy, adding substantial benefits in terms of safety. The winner of the Personal Electric Autonomous Air Transporter competition will be the first team that is able to develop a vehicle that is 100% autonomous and able to carry 100 kg a distance of one kilometer, reaching a maximum altitude of 2,000 feet while maintaining a noise level of less than 72dB. The vehicle must repeat the flight in reverse without recharging or refueling, completing the round-trip in less than 10 minutes.

Reaction Engine

Current vehicles are limited to high efficiency either within or outside of the atmosphere. A reaction engine would allow for optimized operations in either environment, reducing the amount of onboard oxidizer needed during atmospheric flight. Success in this domain could enable higher efficiency rocket launches, as well as potentially lower the technical hurdles to hypersonic point-to-point vehicles. The winning team will be the first to demonstrate an engine able to operate both as a jet engine (using atmospheric oxygen) and as a rocket (using stored oxidizer).

Suborbital

Space research costs today are dominated by expensive launches, precluding many interested researchers, students and companies from engaging. This competition would bring on-line a new era of low cost suborbital rocket flight, which would be useful to academia and scientists. The first team to fly a reusable sub-orbital rocket above 200,000 feet three times in a three day period while carrying a 25 Kg scientific payload exposed to the ambient atmosphere for photographs or research will be determined the winner.

Wolfram Physics

Modern theories of physics lack computational rigor and feature both large gaps and a high degree of uncertainty. Dr. Stephen Wolfram has proposed a grand unified theory of physics which he will post in detail to a website. Teams competing in the Wolfram Physics competition will be asked to evaluate this theory and either formally reject it, or develop it into a fully completed theory with appropriate proofs.