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By Andrew Lawler
ScienceNOW Daily News
14 September 2007
ScienceNOW Daily News
14 September 2007
After pioneering software that allows people to explore Earth in unprecedented detail, Google set its sights on mapping the moon. Now the popular Internet search engine wants to help send a robot there. Yesterday, the Mountain View, California-based company announced that it will sponsor a $30 million prize for the first privately funded lunar robotic rover.
"We are here today embarking upon this great adventure of having a nongovernmental, commercial organization return to the moon and explore," Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in a statement. "And I'm very excited that Google can play a part in it."
The contest is modeled on the Ansari X Prize, which offered $10 million to the first private company to reach suborbital space twice within 2 weeks using a reusable piloted vehicle. Scaled Composites in Mojave, California, won the contest in 2004 and is now building a commercial version for British entrepreneur Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.
According to the rules of the Google Lunar X Prize, the winner must be the first to land a spacecraft on the moon that can travel at least 500 meters and send back data, images, and video of the surface. Peter Diamandis, X Prize chair and chief executive officer of the X Prize Foundation, the organization running the Google prize, explained in a statement that he wants to encourage low-cost missions to the moon in order to open the frontier beyond Earth orbit. "It could be another 6 to 8 years before any government returns," he said. "Even then, it will be at a large expense, and probably with little public involvement."
單字
1. pioneering
開創的,首創的,先導的
2. unprecedented
無先例的,空前的
3. sponsor
發起者;主辦者;倡議者
4. rover
流浪者;漫遊者
5. piloted
帶領;引導
6. entrepreneur
承包人
7. frontier
國境 新領域
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