14 DAY TRIAL // With monetary support from the Royal Dutch Shell company , the X Prize Foundation announced the creation of a new competition, this one focused on fostering innovation through exploration to improve life on Earth.
The effort will go on for three years, and will be supported by a $9-million grant from Shell. The X Prize Foundation is well known for organizing extremely interesting challenges, such as for example the Google Lunar X Prize and the Ansari X Prize.
The purpose of the new competition will be to foster innovation, competition and collaboration at the frontiers of space, Earth and our oceans. The collaboration was announced on Thursday, October 6, according to a press release from the X Prize Foundation.
“Shell has long been on the cutting edge of innovation, and we are proud to bring them into the X PRIZE family, supporting a prize group that advances innovation, exploration and tomorrow’s discoveries,” X Prize Foundation Chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis explained.
“We are closely aligned in our goals to motivate and inspire brilliant innovators from all disciplines to leverage their intellectual capital to explore new frontiers that could result in significant global achievements,” the official added.
Shell representative Gerald Schotman added that the company is constantly investing in innovations that could potentially aid in solving the global energy crisis we are currently facing. As such, the corporation is more than happy to support the new endeavor.
We look “forward to the exciting discoveries that come from the next generation of incentivized competitions,” said Schotman, who is the chief technology officer and executive vice president of Innovation, Research and Development at Shell.
“Currently underway in the X PRIZE Foundation’s Exploration Group is the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, which challenges privately funded teams to safely land a robot on the surface of the moon that can travel over the lunar surface and send images and data back to Earth,” the statement adds.
This competition is already well underway, and several science teams are working towards launching their vehicles to the Moon next year. The goal here is to deploy a rover on the lunar station, have it drive for 500 meters (1,400 feet) and then send back HD images to Earth.