Wanna Win $30 Million?

Then just send a robot probe to the moon by 2012. Today, the X-Prize Foundation announced the Google Prize for a robot race to the moon. The AP reports:

Google Inc. is bankrolling a $30 million spaceflight contest for private companies to safely land a robotic rover on the moon and beam back a gigabyte of images and video to Earth, the Internet search leader said Thursday.

The grand prize could be worth up to $25 million.

If the competition produces a winner, it would prove a major boon to the emerging private spaceflight industry and mark the first time that a nongovernment entity has flown a lunar space probe.

One word: Cool.

Whole AP story here.