Rusty Schweikert and more from the International Space Development Conference this week on planetary radio. Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final

frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan.

As promised, we've got more for you from the ISDC, that big gathering of space enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and executives.

You'll hear from Elon Musk in a few minutes. The founder of PayPal has gone on to create the

SpaceX Corporation, where he is developing a new line of inexpensive rockets. And Apollo

Nine astronaut Rusty Schweichert returns to give us an update on his attempt to save the planet from big rocks that want to kill us.

Emily is back with a great Q&A and we'll wrap up as we always do with Bruce Betts and a new trivia

contest of galactic proportions.

The ISDC even creeps into our headline coverage this week.

NASA and the X Prize Foundation chose the event to announce

the latest of the Space Agency's Centennial Challenges. Can you design and build and demonstrate

a lunar module.

The effort could get you a couple of million dollars.

NASA Deputy Administrator Shauna Dale

came to the conference to help announce the open competition, which will be administered by the X Prize

Foundation under the direction of Space Pioneer Peter Diamandis.

I'm excited to see in fact what the entrepreneurial community will create at this.

We hope to have a significant number of contenders and vehicles flying this October.

And it's my pleasure at this point to officially open up the

Lunar Lander Challenge for registration. Will Pomerams in our office who heads this is Will at ex prize.org. If you're interested in competing, please contact him.

And we're looking forward to having some really spectacular announcements in the next month or so on announcing who's competing and our partners

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