 Hey what's up everybody, welcome to tomorrow. This week I wanted to talk about the Google Lunar X Prize and some exciting updates over the past few weeks and months that will ensure that more teams are still allowed to compete in the race to land on the moon and hopefully win that $20 million cash prize before the deadline. This is your space pod for December 7th, 2016. So first off, we need to give a little bit of back history in order to explain the looming deadline at the end of this year, which will determine how many of the 16 remaining teams will still be allowed to compete for the final deadline of December 31st, 2017 and win the possible prizes. When the Google Lunar X Prize was first announced in 2007, the original deadline was the end of 2012. But then that deadline was extended again to 2014 and then 2015, 2016 and finally to 2017. However, when it was extended to 2017, there was the exception that at the time that extension was made back in March of 2015, that at least one of the Google Lunar X Prize teams had to have a verified launch contract to send their lander slash rover to the moon by the end of that year, 2015. With this new rule, if none of the teams were able to have a verified launch contract by the end of 2015, then the competition would be over. But thankfully, the first team that was able to produce a verified launch contract was the Israeli team, SpaceIL. With the support of two large investment groups and the Israeli government, SpaceIL announced in October of 2015 that they secured a launch contract with SpaceX on one of their Falcon 9 rockets for a late 2017 launch and with that, the Google Lunar X Prize was able to continue. Now, in December of 2015, the Google Lunar X Prize was able to verify a second launch contract and this time it was for a United States based team, Moon Express. Moon Express was able to secure a contract with New Zealand's Rocket Lab on their Electron rocket, which is hopefully going to have its maiden flight here in the next coming months. But now I want to get to this year, 2016. The Google Lunar X Prize has a new requirement for the remaining teams. This requirement is that those teams that still wish to compete in this race have to have a verified launch contract by the end of this year, December 31, 2016, just a few weeks away. And if they don't have a verified launch contract, then they're out of the competition. No more extensions were made to the final deadline to win this entire race. That deadline is still December 31, 2017. But a couple more teams have been able to secure their launch contracts this year in order to stay into the competition and the first team that did so this year came as a little bit of a surprise to me. The team I'm talking about is Synergy Moon. It was in August of this year that Synergy Moon announced that they had a verified launch contract with Interorbital Systems, which is actually a startup that is part of Synergy Moon. And their plan is to launch on their Neptune 8 rocket. Their Neptune rockets are liquid-fueled sounding rockets. They plan to cluster together O-Trag style in order to have something powerful enough to send a small payload to the Moon. Their business plan after this competition is to launch CubeSats into low-Earth orbit in several different configurations of their Neptune rockets. The next team with a verified launch contract, which was only announced last week, is India's Team Indus, launching with ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organization. And they'll be launching on one of their PSLV rockets as a dedicated payload. That's just awesome and it makes Team Indus the fourth team that will be able to remain in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition. Now I also wanted to mention that another team, the Germany-based part-time scientists, have announced that they have a launch contract through Spaceflight Industries. And Spaceflight Industries hasn't announced who the launch provider would be yet. Spaceflight Industries is actually the middleman who was able to book the SpaceX flight for the Israeli team, SpaceIL, on the Falcon 9 rocket. And not only can they book flights on the Falcon 9 rocket, they can also book flights on Orbital ATK's Antares rocket, as well as the Russian Soyuz 2 rocket, and the Ukrainian Dnieper rocket. So any of those could potentially work for part-time scientists, but it hasn't yet been verified by the Google Lunar XPRIZE. So as of me filming this, that launch contract hasn't been verified yet. And they announced that back on November 29th, just recently. So I really hope that for their sake that that launch contract is able to be verified and they're able to continue next year. Because I hate to play favorites, but I really like part-time scientists. I like all the teams, who am I kidding? So in summary, with four possibly five teams that have verified launch contracts out of the remaining 16 teams still in the competition, the future of the other teams could be up in the air. Originally, there were 33 teams that fully registered to participate in the Google Lunar XPRIZE. And of a lot of those teams that have withdrawn already, some of them merged with or were acquired by other teams. For example, Moon Express acquired Rocket City Space Pioneers and Next Giant Leap. And the Israeli team, SpaceIL, merged with a United States team, Odyssey Moon. But some of the other teams that have withdrawn, some of them have continued to work as a space company, but most of them are now defunct. Of the remaining teams that don't secure a verified launch contract, and I'm really hoping we see a lot more announcements before the end of this year, but for the teams that don't get a verified launch contract, I really hope that they're able to continue in some commercial way or merge with one of the other teams so that they can pull their resources and talent together so that one of these teams actually win this competition. That's what I want more than anything is for someone to win this competition. But honestly, I'm getting really excited for 2017. And I'm really hoping that the Google Lunar XPrize will be one of the biggest space highlights of next year. But which team are you rooting for the most? I'm rooting for all of them so much and maybe you guys are too, but do you have any favorites and of the remaining teams, which ones do you really hope get a verified launch contract so that they can continue in the race next year? And also, if their contract gets verified, which Rocket do you think that part-time scientists will be launching on? Let me know in the comments section below. I'm going to end this video here, but I would like to invite you to connect with us on all of our social media pages and share your thoughts about the Google Lunar XPrize and your predictions for who might win. Just share all of your thoughts about it there and let's get a conversation going. Tomorrow is a crowdfunded show through Patreon. And I would like to thank all of our patrons, especially new patrons, whose continued support allows us to keep making these videos. Every little bit helps to create content that you want to see and I am very grateful to each and every one of you for your contributions. Now if you would like to support the show, please visit Patreon.com slash Spacepod for more information and to sign up at whatever level that you feel is appropriate. Thank you very much for watching this video. My name is Michael Clark. Keep moving onwards and upwards everybody and I will see you in the future.