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 every week, there’s a lot of news that comes along! So each week I round up the best items from around the Prize.

Rocket engines, videos galore, and even a little Uwingu were in the mix for the week of August 13th! Big news from the ambitious Romanian team, ARCA, leads it off:

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1.) Executor! Team ARCA completed work on their first Executor rocket engine! Not every team can say they’re building their own rocket. (And ARCA’s got a supersonic plane going, too!). Even Lord Vader would be impressed!:

Check out ARCA’s showcase of the completed rocket engine!

“Executor is the most important ARCA program until now. After the tests are completed we will have high technology product, a great European and world achievement. We take great pride in being a private program in Romania. Executor will allow us to undertake orbital flights.’ - Dumitru Popescu, ARCA President

ARCA image. of the unveiling.

2.) Great Pickens! Team Rocket City Space Pioneers posted a great series of video interviews, where different interns/employees sit down for a chat with seasoned space pioneer (and team lead) Tim Pickens! No pressure! :)

3.) Extraordinary! Team JURBAN posted two awesome introduction videos to the people making their effort happen---one of the videos featuring some of their media team (some of whom are in their 20’s and/or working remotely; send the right email/blog/tweet, and you could be working with a Moon team! :) ):

4.) 360 Envoy! Team Omega Envoy posted a neat video about the development of their rover’s panoramic HD camera:

5.) Uwingu! Team Moon Express became the first corporate sponsor of the buzzworthy new space-cloudsourcing effort Uwingu’s campaign to get launched (via IndieGoGo):

Moon Express Becomes First Corporate Sponsor of Uwingu's IndieGoGo Campaign

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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.

Tuesday Aug-21-2012