Lunar XPrize

Last month Google's XPrize announced the five teams that will continue to compete for their Lunar XPrize. The teams are privately funded (at least 90%) and come from India, Japan, Israel, America, and include an international team.

The grand prize will go to the first team that:

• lands a spacecraft on the moon's surface which then:
• travels 500 meters and:
• "transmits high-definition video and images back to earth"

That team will receive $20,000,000, while second place will receive $5,000,000. They have until the end of this year to launch.

Who are these people who competed in the Lunar XPrize? Some of them talk about their project and their passion below, in one of several videos about the competition: