Interest for space exploration by private companies continues to soar with the announcement of the first private moon mission scheduled to launch in 2017.
According to a report by CNET, Israel's team SpaceIL has made their plan to launch a private moon mission by 2017 official when it signed a contract with the Google Lunar XPrize on Wednesday.
Google Lunar XPrize is a competition created by Google in 2007 to encourage private institutions to get involved in space exploration by putting their rover on the moon. A $20 million prize awaits the first team who will be able to land a privately funded rover that will navigate 500 meters on the moon's surface and send back high definition videos and images to earth. The second team to fulfill the mission will receive $5 million. The teams who will land successfully on the moon must be able to prove that their mission is 90 percent privately funded. The deadline for submitting applications for the competition, which is set for 2017, is by the end of 2016.
Israel's SpaceIL is the first private team to officially sign the contract for the competition. This was announced by XPrize Vice Chairman and President Bob Weiss in a statement on CBS.
"We are proud to officially confirm receipt and verification of SpaceIL's launch contract, positioning them as the first and only Google Lunar X Prize team to demonstrate this important achievement thus far," said Weiss.
SpaceIL is an Israel-based team composed of around 20 full-time employees and 250 volunteers. It plans to send their rover to the moon onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket by the second half of 2017.
SpaceIL will be competing with team Astrobotic based in the United States and team Hakuto based in Japan, both of which expressed their interest to join the competition early this year. Astronautic and Hakuto plan to launch by the end of 2016, although XPrize has yet to verify this information.
