X Prize Cup Deluge; Mars Society Rover competition

With the X Prize Cup about to start, there are more news stories about the event than I can keep up with, and the main event hasn't even started yet. Rather than try to keep up, I'll just point you to the various blogs and other news sources like RLV News/Hobbyspace, Lunar Lander Challenge, and the rest (linked on the right). Many of them are in New Mexico at the X Prize Cup and will be making updates as they happen. It looks like it's going to be a fun and suspenseful event, with space prize competitions and much more. It's well worth keeping up with at these other sites. The X Prize Cup site itself will have a live webcast so people like me can watch from a distance.

Instead of covering the X Prize Cup, the one item I'll point out is a space prize by the Mars Society, which will be holding a Mars Rover competition simulating a rover controlled by Mars astronauts with a $5,000 prize for the winning team. It's starting to get tough to even keep track of all of the space prizes! I think there will be a lot of prestige value for the university, department, and students that win this one (to say nothing of the fun of making a rover).