Lunar Lander Challengers

The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge was won quite a while ago now, but the former teams keep making news. Here are a few recent updates:

Team Phoenicia - This links to the team's newly designed web site. From that site:

Team Phoenicia is undertaking a herculean venture of gloriously confounding proportions: we are entering the Google Lunar X Prize.

Here are some recent blog posts:

How to Get to Purty (part 5)
How to Get to Purty (part 4)
How to Get to Purty (part 3)
In The News
How to Get to Purty (part 2)
How to Get to Purty
Purty

05/02/2010: More Test Firings - SpeedUp

Briefs: XCOR/Masten Space combo; BonNovA test - RLV News
XCOR and Masten collaborate for NASA landers business - RLV News

Masten Space Re-Lights Rocket Engine in Flight - Masten Space Systems

At least one other view of this flight was shown at ISDC 2010. I think it was this heart-stopping one:

Xombie in-air relight view from the ground. - Masten Space Systems on YouTube

SPACE ADVENTURES ANNOUNCES EXCLUSIVE MARKETING AGREEMENT WITH ARMADILLO AEROSPACE - Armadillo Aerospace

Eric Anderson and John Carmack gave more details about this agreement at one of the ISDC 2010 talks:

ISDC 2010 - Anderson/Carmack, Diamandis, Homans - RLV News

The previous link also includes some comments from the Peter Diamandis talk at the ISDC. In addition to the potential prizes listed there, Diamandis also described a few other ideas (all presumably pending funding and additional development). The one I'll mention here is "Lunar Lander Challenge Level 3". I don't have my notes handy (I haven't unpacked from the conference yet), but as I recall the idea was to have a Lunar Lander Challenge that is similar to the one we know, but with no refueling allowed. Staging would be allowed.