Robots could roam the Moon within the next three years, thanks to scientists and students across the world who are vying for the Google Lunar XPrize, a $30-million international competition to collect data and images with robots and send them back to the earth.

“The Moon is the hottest real estate in the solar system right now,” said William Pomerantz, senior director of space prizes at the XPrize Foundation, which is sponsoring the competition. “Every major space agency across the planet is looking to go back to the Moon, which means every university that has space research is focusing on the Moon.”

To win the prize, teams must safely land a robot on the Moon’s surface, travel at least 500 meters, and send a specified package of data, called a “Mooncast,” back to Earth. Mr. Pomerantz said the “Mooncast” would likely be one gigabyte, which translates to about 15 or 20 minutes of high-definition video and a collection of panoramic pictures.

The first team to complete that task by December 31, 2012, will win $20-million. The second team to land will win $5-million, and another $5-million will be awarded in bonus prizes. If no prize is claimed by the first deadline, teams will have until December 31, 2014, to claim a reduced prize of $15-million.

Mr. Pomerantz said the vehicles would be the first to land on the moon since 1976, and that the U.S. hadn’t seen any live or new surface data since 1972. “We’re hoping to show that these robots have capacities to show real scientific research,” Mr. Pomerantz said. “We want to inspire and educate people in same way Apollo did.”

Of the 19 teams, which must get at least 90 percent of their financing privately, several include groups of students or faculty members paired with researchers. About 30 universities are involved with the teams, Mr. Pomerantz said.

They include Omega Envoy, led by students at the University of Central Florida; Astrobotic, led by William L. Whittaker, a robotics professor at Carnegie Mellon University, with support from the University of Arizona; Stellar, whose team includes several faculty members from North Carolina State University and Duke University; Jurban, comprising researchers and a consortium of historically black colleges and universities; Italia, an effort by four Italian universities, and Independence–X Aerospace, which has a partnership with Malaysia’s MARA University of Technology.

“Tranquility Trek” is the name of the first mission for Astrobiotic, scheduled to begin in May 2011, and researchers plan to use the robot to inspect the historic Apollo 11 site. Team Jurban plans to launch September 12, 2011.

The competition is “a wonderful stepping stone as we try to move out further into the cosmos,” Mr. Pomerantz said. —Erica R. Hendry