Commercialising the Moon: the Lunar X Prize and beyond

Next year marks the 40th anniversary of the last manned voyage to the Moon. The Apollo 17 astronauts, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt (the latter, a geologist, the only scientist-astronaut of the Apollo programme) left the Moon on 17 December 1972, leaving behind them a plaque bearing the words: ’Here man completed his first explorations of the Moon.’

With the last mission of the space shuttle underway and NASA’s plans for future manned missions to space seemingly on hold, it might seem odd to talk about the Moon as a target for exploration. But for a number of organisations, the race to the moon is back on, with the prize of increased scientific knowledge and, some are convinced, of enormous financial gains.

The US, Russia, Japan, China and India all have active manned Moon-landing programmes with somewhat elastic timetables. Moreover, 29 teams are competing for a $30m (£19m) prize, funded by Google, to be the first privately funded organisation to land a robotic probe on the Moon.