The XPRIZE Foundation has announced that five teams participating in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition have received Milestone Prizes totaling $5.25 million in recognition of the progress they have made toward the goal of landing a privately funded spacecraft on the moon.

Determined by a panel of science, aeronautics, and space industry experts over the past year, the prizes recognize hardware and software innovations needed to overcome technical risks in three areas — imaging ($250,000), mobility ($500,000), and landing ($1 million) systems.

Astrobotic, a U.S.-based company, won prizes in each category for a total of $1.75 million, while Part-Time Scientists ($750,000), a German group, and Moon Express ($1.25 million), an American company, each received prizes in two categories. The other winners were Hakuto from Japan (mobility) and Team Indus of India (landing). The eventual grand- and second-place prize winners of the competition will have their Milestone winnings deducted from those awards.

For each Milestone Prize category, teams carried out a number of hardware tests representative of their planned lunar mission and shared extensive design information and analysis with the judging panel. Prizes in the landing category were awarded to teams demonstrating progress in areas such as guidance navigation and control, propulsion, and touchdown devices, while the mobility prizes went to teams demonstrating progress in areas such as pointing and driving, avionics for surface navigation, and communications and the imaging prizes recognized progress in areas such as optics, camera thermal control, and image processing capability.

"The $30M Google Lunar XPRIZE is asking teams to accomplish a feat that has never been achieved — the safe landing of a private craft on the lunar surface that travels at least five hundred meters and transmits high-definition video and imagery back to Earth," said Robert K. Weiss, vice chairman and president, XPRIZE. "The goal of this unprecedented competition is to challenge and inspire engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration, and these achievements represent a pivotal moment in this important journey back to the moon."