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Intuitive Machines have successfully soft landed on the Moon, carrying a number of payloads for NASA, this represents a return to the moon for the USA. However far more significantly, it's the first purely commercial lander to land on the surface of the moon, and the first lunar lander to use purely cryogenic propellents for all its deep space maneuvering. Both of these factors are core to NASA's Artemis program, and so seeing success here is important to NASA's plans.However.It's far from a perfect success, because it appears to have fallen over during the landing, and this is limiting the...

Global Competition Challenges Innovators to Develop Breakthrough Technologies to Convert CO2 into Valuable Products.AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--At Fortune’s Brainstorm E conference today, XPRIZE Chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis announces the $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, a competition to address CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. With registration opening today, teams are challenged to develop breakthrough technologies that convert the most CO2 into one or more products with the highest net value. Co-sponsored by NRG and COSIA, the 4-½ year competition will include two tracks, with the new technologies tested at either a coal power plant or a natural gas facility. “We are...

John Thornton is CEO of Astrobotic Technology. He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. When the XPRIZE Foundation announced the Google Lunar XPRIZE in 2007, Astrobotic Technology chairman Red Whittaker declared his intention to compete on the first day. Since then, we have worked methodically on the technology and operations for the $20 million Grand Prize. We have approached this from the outset as an opportunity to build a business. With only a few lunar landings since Apollo, there remains a deep cultural belief that they are extraordinarily difficult and expensive. Bold, risky pursuits are called...

Earlier this year, entrepreneur and X-Prize impresario Peter Diamandis hinted he was about to unveil something amazing: a startup that will mine asteroids for precious metals. “Since my childhood I’ve wanted to do one thing, be an asteroid miner,” Diamandis told Forbes. “So stay tuned on that one.”

YOU WILL NEVER GUESS WHO WAS A GUEST AT OBAMA’s FIRST STATE DINNER….. Mr. Ratan Tata [The chairman of the Tata Group - India's biggest conglomerate] A story emerging out of Britain suggests “follow the money” may explain the enthusiasm of the United Nations to pursue caps on carbon emissions, despite doubts surfacing in the scientific community about the validity of the underlying global warming hypothesis. A Mumbai-based Indian multinational conglomerate with business ties to Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman since 2002 of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, stands to make several hundred million dollars in...

Peter Diamandis, CEO of the X Prize Foundation, wants to use our competitive instincts to make the world a better place. After handing out $10 million to the first private team to achieve suborbital space flight, he's extended his X-prize concept into earthly realms such as automotive engineering, genomics and health care. And while he still sends billionaires to the International Space Station as managing director of the firm Space Adventures, he's lately teamed up with futurist Ray Kurzweil to create the Singularity University, where young entrepreneurs are trained to think about global issues. Ivan Semeniuk spoke with Diamandis about...

GERMAN TEAM PART-TIME-SCIENTISTS ENTERS $30 MILLION GOOGLE LUNAR X PRIZE COMPETITION Berlin, Germany .– Today, Team Part-Time-Scientists announced its official entry into the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition, marking Germany’s debut in this new race to the Moon. The team joins the $30 million contest that challenges space professionals and engineers from across the globe to build and launch a privately funded spacecraft to the Moon. The spacecraft must complete a series of exploration and transmission tasks as outlined in the competition’s official rules. Team Part-Time-Scientists, headquartered in Berlin, Germany has seven team members and is among 19 teams from...

At the 50th anniversary space conference here Thursday, a fight over the future role of NASA's space program inadvertently took off. If it were up to Burt Rutan, the aerospace engineer known for building a suborbital rocket plane that won the Ansari X Prize, NASA wouldn't be developing a spacecraft to put another man on the moon by 2020. That government mission has already been accomplished, and a repeat performance is "silly," Rutan said during a panel held at California Institute of Technology, CalTech, which runs NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. "Taxpayer-funded NASA should only fund research and not development," Rutan...

The X PRIZE Foundation and Google Inc. (NasdaqGS:GOOG - News) today announced the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a remarkable $30 million prize purse. Private companies from around the world will compete to land a privately funded robotic rover on the Moon that is capable of completing several mission objectives, including roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to the Earth. The Google Lunar X PRIZE is an unprecedented international competition that will challenge and inspire engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to...

The X PRIZE Foundation's Competition in Honor of Famed Astronaut Rewards High-School-Aged Teams That Develop an Original Concept to Benefit Personal Spaceflight The X PRIZE Foundation announced the availability of online registration for a new education competition designed to interest students in space, science and technology. The Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award, named in honor of the celebrated Apollo astronaut, will be presented for the first time at this year's Wirefly X PRIZE Cup in October. The award will be presented to the high school team that develops the most creative, new space concept to benefit the emerging personal...

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--For Robin Williams, Tipper Gore, Richard Branson, and even Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, "X" marked the spot at Google this weekend. That "X" would be the X Prize Foundation--the 10-year-old organization behind the $10 million Ansari X Prize spaceflight competition--which held its charity benefit at Google's headquarters here on Saturday. The star-studded event was a sort of coming-out party to Bay Area investors, socialites and celebrities, in an effort to raise money for a dozen more innovation contests in the fields of energy, medicine and commercial spaceflight.

WASHINGTON - Scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs will be able to vie for millions of dollars in prizes, including a grand prize potentially worth $50 million, under House-passed legislation to encourage research into hydrogen as an alternative fuel. Legislation creating the “H Prize,” modeled after the privately funded Ansari X Prize that resulted last year in the first privately developed manned rocket to reach space twice, passed the House Wednesday on a 416-6 vote. A companion bill is to be introduced in the Senate this week.

Washington, DC (AHN) - In what could be the largest medical prize in history, the X-Prize Foundation says $10 million is up for grabs to the first private team that decodes 100 human genomes in 10 days. The organizers believe rapid genetic sequencing is the next great frontier, and could pave the way for a new era of personalized medicine. It could allow doctors to measure patients' vulnerability to illness and genetic connections to diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's. This is the second major challenge from the foundation, which also sponsored the $10 million prize to the team who developed...

As a long time space advocate I have seen many fads, hopes, and dreams come and go in our quest to open the space frontier for everyone. This week something special has happened that has to be commented on. Ms Anousheh Ansari has done something truly wonderful for herself, human spaceflight, and the people of her native Iran. She is not only the world's first female space tourist but the first female born in Iran to go to space. This is a doubly important event in that it has created a global stir among the Iranian diaspora as well as...

The X Prize Cup, an annual space and air show held in southern New Mexico, is currently selling tickets to its two day festival on Oct. 20 -21 at Las Cruces International Airport. This year's Cup will launch three competitions with more than $2.5 million in prizes, including the Lunar Lander Challenge, which is a NASA-supported prize effort showcasing the ability of private companies to develop a next-generation lunar lander, according to the event's Web site; the Vertical Rocket Challenge, described as another lunar-landing-technology-focused competition; and the Space Elevator Game, which tests more than 20 teams to use light to...

Organizers of next month's X Prize Cup announced today that their ticket window is officially open for business, with prices ranging from $10 for daily admission ($5 for kids and students) to $250 for a VIP ducat with access to the flight line, food and an open bar. Active military personnel can get in for free (check the Web site for details). The headliner for the Oct. 20-21 event at the Las Cruces Airport in New Mexico is the Lunar Lander Challenge, during which rocket teams will vie for $2 million in NASA-backed prizes. To figure out the favorites, check...

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- A Russian-built rocket carrying the world's first female space tourist lifted off Monday in Kazakhstan on a flight to the international space station. Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-American telecommunications entrepreneur, was accompanied by a U.S.-Russian crew on the Soyuz TMA-9 capsule.

A young Iranian-born American woman who rallied her wealthy family to underwrite a $10m (£5.3m) competition for the first private spaceflight will soon get to experience for herself the thrill of being a space tourist. On Tuesday, Anousheh Ansari was confirmed as the replacement for Japanese businessman Daisuke Enomoto as a fare-paying passenger onboard the next Russian rocket mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Lift-off for the Soyuz capsule that will carry Mrs Ansari and two members of the next ISS crew is scheduled for 14 September from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. In her quest to fly in space,...

It may not be as heady as the X Prize, but the Space Frontier Foundation is planning what you might call the B Prize for space-related business plans. The payoff for the best pitch? Entrepreneurial glory ... plus a $1,000 poker chip, awarded by an investor at the foundation’s annual conference in Las Vegas next month. XCOR Aerospace's Rich Pournelle, a guy who is well-versed in the world of space entrepreneurship, sent along the call for entries for the NewSpace 2006 Business Plan Competition. Pournelle emphasized that the entries need not be restricted to rocket ships.

HOUSTON, TX (May 25, 2006) - Trustees of the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust announced today that the first-ever Heinlein Prize will go to Dr. Peter H. Diamandis. The Heinlein Prize was founded to reward individuals for making practical contributions to the commercialization of space. Dr. Diamandis will be honored at a dinner and award ceremony on July 7, 2006 at the St. Regis Hotel in Houston, Texas and receive $500,000, a gold Heinlein Medallion, the Lady Vivamus Sword (as described in Heinlein’s book Glory Road) and a Laureate’s Diploma.