that was initially developed for Phoenicia's X Prize attempt.

Others might be leaving the moon race, but they are using their tech to take on other projects in the space industry, says Lunar X Prize senior director Alexandra Hall. "I don't really see this as a downer, actually," Hall says. "One of the key goals is to stimulate the new space economy. That's not just about landing on the moon. It's about all facets: the technology and the supply chain."

Hall says that another team to drop out of the competition, Team ARCA (which also competed for the Ansari X Prize to build a reusable manned spacecraft), have used their technology development to create a space industry in Romania. "They recently won a contract to test parachutes for the nextMars mission. They've become a force to be reckoned with," she says. ARCA will be working with the European Space Agency to perfect the parachutes for ESA's ExoMars 2016 mission.

Two other teams are leaving the competition to develop their technology for Earth-based initiatives. Team Selenokhod, based in Moscow, have already adapted their image-processing and navigation systems for use in warehouse-stacking vehicles. And the Baltimore-based Jurban Team withdrew from the race to enter another X Prize challenge: They will try to build a tricorder.

The fact that new technologies applicable on Earth as well as in space have already come out of the race to the moon means the prize competition is beginning to be a success. Many of today's key technologies came out of NASA research and just found