Google is sponsoring a $20 million prize to the first group that can drop a robotic spacecraft on the moon. Once its there it has to send video and data back to Earth and move 1500 feet. They expect the contest to end in 2012, just in time for a lame-duck President Obama to send out the first wave of attack ships against in the invading Zixron forces.
Team Italia’s solution, shown above, uses a nice bit of sausage and a ball of mozzarella to traverse the moon’s surface while home team Carnegie Mellon wants to land on the Apollo 11 site. Why don’t we start a Team CrunchGear? Oh, right. Matt’s not supposed to handle explosive propellants.
10 teams sign up to land toaster-sized bots, cellphone-sized rovers on the Moon [DVice]