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Google Lunar XPrize Awards $6.0M To Teams

Marina Del Ray's XPrize Foundation, the group which is behind a number of large, prize-based competitions to help advance technology, said Monday that it has awarded $6.0M in total to five different teams, for their progress in overcoming key technical risks to land a mission on the moon. The foundation said the awards from the $30M Google Lunar XPrize effort are smaller "Milestone" prizes, and range from $1M to $250,000 in each of three areas, for showing progress on the hardware and software needed for a functioning lunar lander. The top teams came from the US, India, Japan, and Germany, with Astrobiotic gaining a total of $1.75M across those three areas for its work. Photo: Astrobiotic's entry into the Google Lunar X Prize