Today at a press conference at Google's Mountain View, California headquarters, the X Prize Foundation announced the 10 official competitors for its $30 million Google Lunar X Prize. It will not be an easy thing to win. To qualify, a team must land a privately funded spacecraft on the moon, rove at least 500 meters, and beam a particular set of video, pictures and data back to earth. Oh, and ideally it will do this within the next four years, because after December 31st 2012, the purse drops to $15 million.

When Brian Binnie piloted SpaceShipOne, the world’s first privately built spaceship, to 367,442 feet in October, he wasn’t just gunning for the $10-million Ansari X Prize. His flight was about the future of space tourism, and quite a few potential customers were watching on television. Just five days before Mojave Aerospace Ventures captured the prize—for reaching suborbital space twice within two weeks—billionaire Richard Branson announced he would soon begin selling tickets for the first-ever commercial space airline.

Oct. 4, 2004—MOJAVE, CALIFORNIA Scaled Composites test pilot Brian Binnie earned his astronaut wings today after flying Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne nearly flawlessly to a yet-unconfirmed 368,000 feet. Binnie, who hadn’t flown the vehicle since its first powered flight last December—a flight that ended with a hard runway touchdown that broke the landing gear—follows Mike Melvill in the two-flight effort to win the $10-million Ansari X Prize.