The $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE is an awesome race to the Moon----challenging a variety of private companies to be the first to land their own rover on the lunar surface

With 25 teams, all ramping up the action, there’s a lot of news that comes along! So each week I round up the best items from all around the X Prize.

Your name in the stars, playing in a sandbox for a living, launching your own rockets...everyone’s childhood dreams came true in the week of July 30th! Dream on below:

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1) Name In The Stars (Literally)! Team JURBAN wants to put your name in the stars...literally!

For ‘less than a cup of coffee’, you get 40 characters to put on a microchip that’ll broadcast your message out into space. Make some alien go “Wow!”, and get your name on the Moon to boot :)

Image: The Ohio State University Radio Observatory and the North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO) via Wikimedia Commons.

2.) Cubed! Team ARCA announced they’ll be using their self-developed rocket to launch a Bulgarian CubeSat:

ARCA will launch CubeMessenger the next Bulgarian satellite

Image: Razvan Socol on Wikimedia Commons.

3.)Sandbox! Team Rocket City Space Pioneers posted a fun video of some prototype rover testing---sandbox style! Watch the vid to see if the rover passes its suspension tests with flying colors, or fails miserably!:

4.) Pay it Forward! Team Euroluna posted a neat video talking about what payload they’ll eb required to have on their mission. Interesting size requirements:

5.) Epic Future Envoy! Space show Epic Future Space sat down with team Omega Envoy’s Ruben Nunez for a great interview on getting involved with the team, and more:

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I’ll be rounding these up on a weekly basis, so check back to keep up on what cool things are going down with the Google Lunar X PRIZE!

For the full skinny on everything that happens, follow the official Lunar X PRIZE feeds for team blogs, team social feeds, and team videos

And if you have any favorite GLXP items that I didn’t share here...post ’em in the comments below! We can all debate the awesomeness ;)

by: Nick A.

Monday Aug-06-2012