No going for the moon: Xprize Foundation officially calls off lunar mission

Among the five finalists for the lunar mission was India's Bengaluru-based start-up Team Indus, which could not raise even half the Rs 4.5 billion required for the mission to the moon

Xprize Foundation, a non-profit organisation that designs public competitions to encourage technological development for human benefit, on Wednesday announced it was cancelling its lunar mission. This was after its finalists, including India's Team Indus, failed to raise funds for putting a rover on the moon.

“After close consultation with our five Google Lunar Xprize finalist teams over the past several months, we have concluded that no team will make a launch attempt to reach the moon by the March 31, 2018, deadline,” Peter H Diamandis, founder & executive chairman of Xprize & Marcus Shingles, and chief executive officer of Xprize, said in a statement.

Among the five finalists selected for the lunar mission was India’s Bengaluru-based start-up Team Indus. The company could not raise even half the Rs 4.5 billion required for the mission to the moon, despite getting the backing of Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, Tata Group doyen Ratan Tata and Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal.

Team Indus had to complete the mission of landing a rover and driving it for 500 metres on the moon surface by March. The rover had to send high-definition videos and images back to the earth for winning the $20 million prize. Xprize had also mandated that a private team could seek only up to 10 per cent of the required funding from any government agency.

Teams and the companies that own the teams together managed to raise more than $300 million through corporate sponsorships, government contracts and venture capital, including the largest space-related series A investment of $90 million.

This literal “moonshot” is hard, and while we did expect a winner by now, due to the difficulties of fundraising, besides technical and regulatory challenges, the grand prize of the $30 million Google Lunar Xprize will go unclaimed, said Xprize in a statement.

Xprize is exploring a number of ways to proceed from here. These might include finding a new title sponsor to provide a prize purse, following in the footsteps of Google’s generosity, or continuing the Lunar Xprize as a non-cash competition where it would follow and promote the teams and help celebrate their achievements.