PLAYA VISTA, CA (September 1, 2010) – Today, the X PRIZE Foundation, an educational non-profit organization that drives innovation through incentive prizes , and LEGO Group, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of play materials for children, announced the winners of MoonBots, a global educational contest. The competition partnered with major technology leaders including Google, Inc., National Instruments and Wired Magazine’s GeekDad blog and challenged students, ranging from ages 9 – 18, to create simulated lunar rovers, using LEGO bricks and MINDSTORM components, similar to those competing for the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, an international competition for privately funded teams to build a rover to land on and explore the surface of the Moon. More than 200 teams from 16 nations representing every continent but Antarctica registered for MoonBots.

Team Landroids of New Jersey, a group of five 8th-grade neighborhood friends who participate in various science competitions and robotics challenges, was named the grand winner of MoonBots. As part of their reward, the team will travel to LEGO’s world headquarters in BIllund, Denmark to tour the LEGO factory and meet with company executives. Second place was awarded to team Shadowed Craters of California and third place was claimed by Team Moonwalk, jointly of New Jersey and Connecticut. All three finalist teams also received registrations and start up kits to compete in the FIRST® robotics competitions.



Winners were selected by a team of expert judges including X PRIZE Foundation Trustees Anousheh Ansari, entrepreneur and private astronaut and Dean Kamen, inventor, entrepreneur and founder of the FIRST® robotics competitions. Other judges included Master LEGO robot builder Steve Hassenplug and Jeff Kodosky, co-Founder of the engineering firm National Instruments.

“We were overwhelmed by the achievements of the MoonBots finalists,” noted Steven Canvin, Community Manager for LEGO MINDSTORMS. “Watching these teams of students—plus their adult coaches and mentors—make their LEGO MINDSTORMS robots autonomously navigate a simulated lunar landscape built from LEGO elements, we have seen firsthand how teams of children engage complex problems and actually find viable solutions. Putting a robot on the surface of the Moon is a tremendous feat, and it was wonderful to give these students a taste of what that would entail. Hopefully, this gives them the confidence and passion move onwards to very successful careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.” The first phase of the competition required students to conduct in-depth research about lunar exploration as well as use Computer Assisted Design (CAD) software mock up a lunar robot. From there, the top 20 teams advanced to the second stage where finalists spent the summer preparing for a live “Mission Webcast,” in which each team’s robot performed a variety of tasks meant to simulate the requirements of the Google Lunar X PRIZE. Each team also completed a video essay about Lunar Exploration as well as a video documentary about their process in the journey of learning about the Google Lunar X PRIZE and STEM related lessons.

“The work these students did this summer was truly spectacular” said William Pomerantz, Senior Director of Space Prizes for the X PRIZE Foundation. “The mission very closely paralleled the work our Google Lunar X PRIZE teams were doing, so we greatly enjoyed watching those technical challenges worked out on a different scale. The new era of lunar exploration is being built on the contribution of people of all ages and nationalities, and it is clear that the MoonBots participants have what it takes to make important contributions.”

For more information about MoonBots and to read about the three winners and all of the other competitors, please visit: www.moonbots.org.

Guest post from Chanda Gonzales, Manager of Education for the Google Lunar X PRIZE

MoonBots: A Google Lunar X PRIZE LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Challenge was launched this last April at the 2010 FIRST Championship in Atlanta, Georgia. X PRIZE Foundation, LEGO, Google, National Instruments, and WIRED- GeekDad partnered with each other to develop this STEM education challenge for youth. The MoonBots Challenge mirrors the requirements that teams of innovators and entrepreneurs from around the world are working toward right now in pursuit of the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE.

During Phase One of the MoonBots Challenge, 212 youth-adult teams created a design for a robot that they thought could explore a LEGO lunar surface as well as created an original video essay that discussed their thoughts about lunar exploration. Twenty teams were then selected to compete in Phase Two of the Challenge: ARES (Texas, USA); Coastal Quarks (California, USA); Cougar LEGO Robotics Team (Ohio, USA); Crandroids (Michigan, USA); G.I.R.L.S. (Missouri, USA); got robot? (Illinois, USA); Intergalactic Bacon (Florida, USA); Just Ducky (Minnesota, USA); Landroids (New Jersey, USA); LegoAces (Ohio, USA); Lunar Horizon (California, USA); Milkyway Monsters (Massachusetts, USA); Moonwalk (New Jersey/Connecticut, USA); New Hartford RoboSpartans (New York, USA); OABB 4-H Lego Robots (California, USA); Pushing Frontiers (Lovenjoel, Belguim); Team Tater Tot (Minnesota, USA); The Shadowed Craters (California, USA); WEBstormers (Cape Town, South Africa); and Yellow Jackets (Michigan, USA).

Each team received a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 kit and enough LEGO bricks to build their replica lunar surface. They have spent their summer building a LEGO lunar surface, designing and programming the robot as well as producing their final lunar education video. This week marks the end of Phase Two. Teams will submit their video documentary and complete their live simulated final mission. Please enjoy viewing the components that teams will be judged on by our expert judges, and the collection of team documentaries on the Google Lunar X PRIZE YouTube Channel.

For more information about MoonBots, and to learn more about the twenty finalist teams, please visit: www.moonbots.org.

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Expert Judges:

Anousheh Ansari
Anousheh Ansari brings more than two decades as a successful serial entrepreneur to Prodea Systems, where she serves as chairman. Anousheh captured headlines around the world as the first female private space explorer. She earned a place in history as the fourth private explorer to visit space, and the first astronaut of Iranian descent.

An active proponent of world-changing technologies, Anousheh has dreamed of space exploration since childhood. Her family provided the title sponsorship for the Ansari X PRIZE, a $10 million cash award for the first non-governmental organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. This feat was accomplished in 2004 by legendary aerospace designer Burt Rutan in 2004.

Steve Hassenplug
Steve Hassenplug is a Master LEGO robot builder who has been building with LEGO MINDSTORMS since 1999. He has created LEGO robots that can balance on two-wheels, play Connect Four, and nagivate outdoors using GPS. He also led the team that developed the Great Ball Contraption standard, and Monster Chess, a 150 sq ft chess game made with 32 robotic chess pieces.

Steve was selected by LEGO to participate in the MINDSTORMS User Panel (MUP), which was made of four adult LEGO builders who helped to develop the MINDSTORMS NXT, and continues to work with LEGO and other adult builders in the MINDSTORMS Community Partners (MCP).

Dean Kamen
As an inventor and physicist, Dean Kamen has dedicated his life to developing technologies that help people lead better lives. As an inventor, he holds more than 440 U.S. and foreign patents, many of them for innovative medical devices that have expanded the frontiers of health care worldwide.

Among Dean’s proudest accomplishments is founding FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an organization dedicated to motivating the next generation to understand, use and enjoy science and technology. In 2010, its flagship program, the FIRST Robotics Competition, will reach more than 45,000 high-school students on more than 1,800 teams in 43 regional competitions, seven district competitions, and one national championship. The FIRST Robotics Competition teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way. . In 1998, the FIRST LEGO League was created for children ages 9-14. Similar to the FIRST Robotics Competition, these young participants build a robot and compete in an event designed for their age group.

Jeff Kodosky
NI Business and Technology Fellow, Jeff Kodosky, cofounded National Instruments with Dr. James Truchard and William Nowlin in 1976 while working at The University of Texas at Austin. Today, he is a respected mentor in the NI global R&D organization and continues to chart new directions for the company's flagship product, the NI LabVIEW graphical development platform.

Kodosky, revered by engineers and scientists around the world as the "father of LabVIEW," invented the graphical programming language that defines the software, spurring the development and widespread adoption of virtual instrumentation and making instrument automation available to all engineers. Since the initial release of LabVIEW in 1986, Kodosky has developed more than 30 patented LabVIEW technologies and has used his LabVIEW expertise to help guide the development and expansion of LabVIEW to targets previously out of reach for many engineers, such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), smart sensors, microcontrollers, and other embedded devices. This ongoing work has helped NI grow this software into an award-winning industry standard programming environment that continuously addresses an ever-growing variety of industries and application areas.

This past Friday (6 August 2010), the commercial lunar exploration industry—including the 21 teams competing in the $30M Google Lunar X PRIZE—got a boost when NASA, the US civil space agency, announced its intentions to purchase specific data related to lunar exploration resulting from commercial development of small, robotic lunar landers. This important announcement not only represents a significant effort to further lunar exploration but also shows that NASA recognizes the valuable insight that private companies that can provide into emerging technologies and systems that will benefit NASA as it develops its own plans to explore the solar system.

The Innovative Lunar Demonstrations Data (ILDD) program, managed out of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, will award small, firm-fixed price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts over the course of the next few years, with a total value of as much as $30.1 million. NASA explained that multiple awards are possible, with a minimum data purchase of $10,000 for each selected contractor. Individual awardees can earn as much as $10.1 million. Through these contracts, NASA is purchasing “data associated with the design and demonstration of an end-to-end lunar landing mission including: hardware design, development, and testing; ground operations and integration; launch, trajectory correction maneuvers, and lunar braking burn; lunar landing; and other enhanced capabilities.”

A wide range of companies are expected to respond to the opportunity, including many of the Google Lunar X PRIZE competitors. These teams—small businesses, non-profits, and university consortia located across the United States and globally—are developing important technologies and capabilities that will allow NASA to accomplish more in less time and for less money. The type of data that NASA is soliciting with these contracts has never before been available for purchase, and will come at a substantially lower cost than would be possible through dedicated governmental missions.

NASA’s offering will come as welcome news to those on both sides of the recent debate over the future of the agency’s exploration program, many of whom feared the agency would abandon exploration of the Moon. With this procurement effort, NASA has re-established itself as a world leader in the new era of lunar exploration, ‘Moon 2.0,’ which derives sustainability from an open, participatory relationship between civil and commercial partners from many nations.

Tiffany Montague, a Manager of Business Development at Google and the company’s main representative for the Google Lunar X PRIZE, says that "we're thrilled that NASA has seized this creative opportunity to engage with the commercial space industry. We're approaching an era when space will finally become open and accessible for everyone, and it's exciting to see private and public sectors complement each other."

William Pomerantz, Senior Director for Space Prizes at the X PRIZE Foundation, notes that “this NASA announcement will allow for public private partnerships that will maximize the results we’ll see from this new era of lunar exploration. From the start, we’ve worked with NASA to ensure that the technologies and systems that emerge from the Google Lunar X PRIZE will be complementary to NASA’s own efforts, rather than competing with them.”

A section of the Google Lunar X PRIZE rules that requires teams to be mainly privately funded likely will not interfere with teams that choose to pursue this opportunity. We’ve always drawn a distinction in our rules and in our rhetoric between arrangements where governments are financiers of teams versus those where governments are the customers of teams. Simple funding arrangements are probably not sustainable over long periods of time, but healthy customer-provider relationships are, and our rules reflect that difference. Indeed, the idea of private firms selling services to government space agencies, among other customers, was expressly the concept behind the Google Lunar X PRIZE.

The contract awards will be managed by NASA’s Lunar Lander Project Office. For more information, visit NASA’s website for the program, http://procurement.jsc.nasa.gov/ildd/