Prize Roundup: Heinlein Trust Award, Museum of Flight Activity, CanSats, Ocean Prizes, More

I recently posted about the Nanosatellite Launch Challenge.  Space Florida is also involved with another space competition: Space Florida and NASA-KSC announce the 3rd Annual Planetary Lander “Egg-Drop” Competition for Florida Elementary, Middle and High School Students.

$15,000 Space Commercialization Award to SolidEnergy, MIT for “Shipstone” - Heinlein Prize Trust

Boston student wins contest for XCOR Lynx spaceflight - RLV News

Updates and Info - Sample Return Robot Challenge - This post mentions a new forum and other topics of interest to the teams.  The event is less than 2 months away (June 15-18).

MoonBots heads to St. Louis for FIRST World Robotics Championships - Google Lunar X PRIZE Staff Blog

Here's some news from the Museum of Flight:

The Future of Space - I'm sure by now you know all about the introduction of Planetary Resources by X PRIZE Foundation Chairman Peter Diamandis and many others.

Planetary Resources and the Google Lunar X PRIZE - Google Lunar X PRIZE Staff Blog

Space Elevator Conference moves to the Boeing Museum of Flight! - Space Elevator Blog - According to the conference site (which is expected to be updated in early May), this includes the Strong Tether Competition and RoboQuest, a robotic climber competition for kids.  According to The Artsutanov and Pearson Prizes, a recent update at ISEC, the topics for the 2013 competition will be announced at this year's conference to give more time for entries.

Here are a couple of updates on CanSats:

Worldwide CanSat Competitions - De La Cosa CanSat Team

European CanSat competition begins - ESA

The X PRIZE Foundation is working hard to develop ocean prizes:

Robots of the Sea - neXt PRIZE - Erica Wagner from The X PRIZE Foundation writes about the advisory meeting for the James Cook X PRIZE, a potential future prize for autonomous underwater vehicles. 

Attention Heroes: Who Will Save The World's Oceans? - Forbes gives us some news from the X PRIZE Foundation Visioneering conference:

Wendy Schmidt, President of the Schmidt Family Foundation and spouse of Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, announced her intent to sponsor a prize to address the issue (ocean acidification). ... To compete in the Ocean Health X Prize, winners must: Build and demonstrate the most accurate and reliable deep ocean pH sensors to help measure the global effects of climate change on the world’s oceans.

Visioneering 2012 - X PRIZE Foundation - You can see a summary of this workshop and the top prize concepts there, as well as a number of photos of the event.