J.J. Abrams Takes on a Real Space Story

J.J. Abrams has been the king of space stories over the years with his reworking of the Star Trek stories in the movies (with mixed success in my opinion) to his continuation of the Star Wars movies (where he went the other extreme and took no chances).

Now he has a real story to tell. Mr. Abrams is involved in a new series called Moon Shot all about the Google Lunar XPrize.  While his involvement is minimal, that's the way it works in Hollywood - names are everything.  

Here are the basics on the Lunar XPrize competition:

 Created in 2007, the mission of the Google Lunar XPRIZE is to incentivize space entrepreneurs to create a new era of affordable access to the Moon and beyond.

 The competition’s $30 million prize purse will be awarded to teams who are able to land a privately funded rover on the moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit back high definition video and images.

The lunar efforts run through 2017 when the launches should occur.  So the the nine-part series has years of activities to share.  Here is a trailer for the documentary.

Moon Shot will premiere on Google Play March 15th and YouTube and March 17th. I just hope they don't reboot the XPrize by throwing in time travel.