Every so often I do a write up of something cool that doesn’t have to do with the great beyond, no, not heaven but deep space. XPRIZE has launched a contest which rewards exploration of the deep sea. AND when you think about it, it’s just like space. The astronauts often train in the water, they can’t breathe in the water, there are many over the top creatures in the deep sea, a lot of it is uncharted ‘land’…and I could go on listing the similarities as there are many.
This new XPRIZE that is backed by SHELL is divided into two parts. In the first part an autonomous, robotic vehicle must be developed – one capable of operating at depths of 2.5 miles (or 4,000 meters). These vehicles or submersibles will be able to relay images of enough detail to identify and sort the archeological features of the biological or geological objects. This first grouping contains the minimum requirements – speed, depth, & autonomous operations leaving the teams to then be judged on the quality of the images relayed from the deep. There is a $4 million prize followed by the second prize of $1 million.
But wait, there’s more…
The second part of this contest for which up to ten teams can qualify is worth an additional $1 million. (the prize $$ is being offered by NOAA) NOAA is asking for a team that can trace a biological (perhaps alien?) or chemical signal to its source of origin.
But wait, still more…
SHELL/XPRIZE offers this as part of a ten year XPRIZE Ocean Initiative and intends to launch several multimillion dollar prizes by the year 2020. Leading us deeper into the sea just years shy of the year(s) that will see us re-enter the skies and space and the Moon. Very cool!
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