CNet is writing a number of "2007 Year in Review" articles covering various categories (Web 2.0, etc). One of the categories is Science, and just about everything in the yearly science review covered either space, or robotics, or both. Not only that, but space prizes and robotic prizes (or both at the same time) are featured heavily. To be honest, even I wouldn't have featured space or prizes so prominently in a category that covers science in general, unless I were giving space and prizes a bit of a boost because they're so fun to read about.
If you check the links to the right of the article, you'll see a lot more prize-related headlines from 2007.