Companies such as those competing for the Google Lunar X Prize could tap a commercial lunar market of more than $1 billion over the coming decade, a new report from the Futron Corporation finds.

The report, which includes a detailed examination of the nineteen teams registered in the Lunar X Prize competition and an analysis of potential lines of business, identifies six key market areas: hardware sales to the worldwide government sector, services provided to the government sector, products provided to the commercial sector, entertainment, sponsorship, and technology sales and licensing. The report predicts that, taken together, the value of these markets could total between $1 billion and $1.56 billion over the next decade. The report also notes that some Lunar X Prize competitors have set their sights on additional market sectors, which could result in an even larger total market size.

The results of the study are welcome news to the X Prize Foundation, which administers the $30 million competition that challenges space professionals and engineers from around the world to build and launch privately funded spacecraft capable of exploring the lunar surface. Beneficiaries of the commercial lunar market — and new era of lunar exploration in general — could include national space programs, academia, the general public, and the economies of nations where teams are working to meet the challenges of lunar exploration.

"The glories of the first moon race were accomplished with only two real developers and two real customers — the national space programs of the United States and of the Soviet Union," said William Pomerantz, senior director of space prizes at the X Prize Foundation. "Now we're entering a new paradigm — Moon 2.0 — that features an enormous variety of innovators each trying to serve a wide range of customers....That breadth of impact will make Moon 2.0 much more sustainable and longer lasting than the first era of lunar exploration."