The ambitious project of $30 million of Google Lunar X prize has ended without any competition. The project was to send a robotic mission on the surface of the moon, but none of the teams were able to meet the March 31st deadline.
According to the news reported in the NDTV, Peter Diamandis and Marcus Shingles wrote in the statement that “we have concluded that no team will make a launch attempt to reach the moon by the March 31st, 2018 deadline.” They further added that “This literal ‘moonshot’ is hard, and while we did expect a winner by now, due to the difficulties of fundraising, technical and regulatory challenges, the grand prize of the $30 [million] Google Lunar XPrize will go unclaimed.”
The XPrize said that it is “exploring a number of ways to proceed from here. This may include finding a new title sponsor to provide a prize purse following in the footsteps of Google’s generosity, or continuing the Lunar XPrize as a non-cash competition.”
The mission was actually to land a space craft on moon’ surface, travel for 500 meters and then send back HD images and videos back to earth.