A few photos from the X Prize event in LA today:

From left: Bob Weiss of the X Prize Foundation, Larry Page of Google, Peter Diamandis of the X Prize Foundation, and Buzz Aldrin answer questions after the press conference.

While Diamandis talked, a small robotic rover (built by the Univ. of Oklahoma) rolled out onto the stage and onto some faux lunar rocks (where it remained until it was moved by hand later in the press event, either by design or because it got stuck)

A closeup of a model of a future lunar explorer, with a famous past human lunar explorer in the background.

During opening ceremonies for NextFest just before the X Prize announcement, a man with a rocket backpack flew over the crowd (literally — my ears were ringing from the noise of the rocket!) to “deliver” a proclamation to the mayor of LA in honor of the event.

A sentimental favorite: Thursday was an educational day at NextFest, with thousands of students in attendance. After the X Prize event was over a group of kids came over and took positions under a giant model of the Moon by the stage. Education and inspriation of youth was a big theme of the X Prize announcement; let’s hope these kids stay inspired.

I just got out of some press events associated with the Google Lunar X Prize announcement this morning here in LA (where I discovered I created a little heartburn among the X Prize folks by linking to the HuffPo piece earlier this morning.) I’ll have more later, but some highlights from the announcement:

• This is indeed a lunar rover prize, with the goal of soft-landing a spacecraft on the Moon, roams at least 500 meters, and returns two “Mooncasts” (hi-res panoramic photos and video);
• The prize is $20 million for the first to achieve the feat, and $5 million for the second; there is also $5 million in additional “bonus” prizes for things ranging from discovering water ice to having the most “ethnically diverse” team;
• Google is providing the $30M in prize money, but will allow other sponsors to come in and support additional bonus prizes;
• The prize expires on December 31, 2014, and the grand prize decreases to $15 million if the prize is not won by December 31, 2012;
• SpaceX will provide Falcon launches “at cost” to competition participants, a savings of about 10 percent from list prizes (according to Elon Musk, who also spoke at the press conference);
• The SETI Institute and Universal Space Networks are also providing communications support for competitors;
• As for why do a lunar lander prize, I asked Peter Diamandis about this after the event. Their top two choices for the next big space prize they wanted to do was a lunar lander prize and a human orbital spaceflight prize. Google was particularly interested in funding the lunar prize (and a human orbital spaceflight prize would have required at least $50M, he said) so that’s the direction they took.

I’ll have more on this later, and also probably in Monday’s issue of The Space Review, as my schedule permits (I have a redeye back to the east coast tonight…)

Later today the X Prize Foundation is scheduled to announce its next major prize competition, which has been billed as “the largest international prize in history” with a Fortune 500 sponsor. However, there is already one credible report about the prize. According to a blog post by Esther Wojcicki on The Huffington Post, today’s announcement will be the $30-million Google Lunar XPrize. the competition will be for the first privately-developed mission to place a robotic rover on the surface of the Moon. The post includes a link to the prize web site, which currently returns a “404 Not Found” error message. (There’s a typo in the link in the HuffPo post: it should be googlelunarxprize.org, not googlelunarprize.org. The googlelunarxprize.org domain is registered to the X Prize Foundation, according to whois.) The article also references a space section of the Google web site; that, too, also returns a 404 error message early this morning.

If this report is correct, then it is not that surprising. A “real” lunar lander competition had long been discussed as a potential long-term prize, either for the X Prize or NASA’s Centennial Challenges program. (NASA deputy administrator Shana Dale will participate in the prize announcement today in Los Angeles, NASA announced yesterday.) And it’s also not that surprising to see Google taking a lead sponsorship role, given that Google co-founder Larry Page is on the board of trustees of the X Prize Foundation and that Google has hosted some X Prize-related events in the past. It does sound more credible than some of the other ideas that have been floated about, like a point-to-point suborbital space prize.

And why should you trust Esther Wojcicki anyway? She’s a high school journalism teacher in Palo Alto, California. She’s also the mother-in-law of Sergey Brin, the other co-founder of Google, so she’s something of an inside source.