To race to the Moon

IN 1959, the Soviet Luna-1 spacecraft escaped Earth’s gravity and performed a flyby of the Moon.

This marked the beginning of humanity’s attempts to travel to the Moon and further cemented the “space race” of the time.

Eleven years on, the US Apollo 11 spacecraft touched down to the lunar surface carrying two astronauts – the first time humans had set foot on another world.

The space race had propelled us in a short space of time, not just beyond the Earth but to another body in the solar system.

Over the next decades, people began to look elsewhere and interest in lunar exploration faded and fell by to achieve in reality. A group taking part in the competition must design and launch a vehicle that can make the trip to the Moon, safely land on the lunar surface then travel at least 500m across the surface.

Any team who can do that by the competition deadline can potentially win $20million.

With privately funded groups taking part, everything needs to become more costeffective. There is room for experimentation and innovation, with the opportunity to develop new technologies in the process of trying to win the prize.

Those technologies could then be used by others and, as a result, perhaps make spacecraft more profitable and turn spaceflight into an industry. And the cheaper it is