Look for details next week on the Odyssey Moon effort, the first team to complete registration for the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize. That mission will use private-sector built lunar lander hardware in an attempt to snag the purse.

Odyssey Moon is an Isle of Man-based team with a strong Canadian role and significant international participation.

The Google Lunar X Prize is financially backed by Googleeer’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, working with the X Prize Foundation in Santa Monica, California.

Since the competition was announced September 13, well over 300 registration requests have come in from all over the world, said Peter Diamandis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the X Prize Foundation.

In fact, according to Sarah Evans, spokeswoman for the X Prize Foundation, the latest stats regarding number of inquiries is 347 from 39 nations, including China, Peru and Austria.

Not all of these requests will mature into actual teams and flight hardware. Still, the response has been outstanding, Diamandis said earlier this month at Space Vision 2007, held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and sponsored by the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS).

“I feel fairly certain that we can have a winner of this competition well before the deadline, which is the end of 2014. In fact, we could well have a winner within the next three to four years,” Diamandis predicted. “Our intention is a global, private race to the Moon…and to get there on the surface way before any government can.”

There are some worrisome trends in NASA’s robotic exploration of the Solar System as highlighted in a new study — “Grading NASA’s Solar System Exploration Program - A Midterm Review” — issued today by the National Academies’ National Research Council (NRC). The report was sponsored by NASA.

The review takes a hard look at where NASA stands today based on implementing the recommendations made in the NRC’s 2003-2013 Solar System exploration decadal survey, the “New Frontiers in the Solar System” study.

The committee’s results spotlight five categories: science goals and objectives; flight missions; Mars; research and analysis, planetary astronomy and mission data analysis programs; as well as enabling technologies.

One take home message of major concern is that NASA is headed towards a cliff - that is, unless money is put into technology development — a number of top science goals can’t be met. The report gives the space agency a “D” in this department, with the trend line on a “getting worse” slope.

Indeed, the report’s overall summary for NASA’s Solar System exploration is listed as a “B” grade, noting that the trend line is downward.

Some good news - the NRC committee report assesses the NASA Mars exploration program for the period 2000-2010 as meriting an “A”. But looking downrange, the committee is concerned that, while some individual components of a Mars Sample Return (MSR) effort are being addressed, the overall MSR strategy at NASA is not apparent. NASA’s lack of visible resources dedicated to the MSR project is the basis for the committee’s downward trend assessment.

The NRC committee writing the report notes that they are “deeply concerned” with both the grade and the trend — a “C” and downward trend — in the area of research and analysis, planetary astronomy, and flight mission data. That grade is driven by falling investment in fundamental science and two failing grades in planetary astronomy.

One report recommendation is that NASA should select a Europa mission concept and secure a new start for the project before 2011.

The report also flags the fact that important science in the study of exoplanets is “falling through the bureaucratic cracks” at NASA.

Because this is a mid-term appraisal, the report observes that NASA still has the ability to significantly improve these grades before the next decadal survey is produced. Also, a number of areas are pointed to in which NASA is given high-points. For instance, the NRC committee report gives gold stars to NASA’s Discovery and New Frontiers programs - but thinks the space agency needs to fly more of them.

Still, the NRC committee report also explains that “the situation could get considerably worse, and the current overall trend is alarming.”

Check out the full report at: http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12070#toc

Progress in developing a vertical takeoff/vertical landing suborbital spaceship has been reported by billionaire Jeff Bezos, chairman and chief executive officer of Amazon.com. He is bankrolling Blue Origin, a rocket development company with engineering and manufacturing teams housed in a 280,000 square foot facility on 26 acres in Kent, Washington.

Bezos described Blue Origin progress during a November 19 interview on the Charlie Rose television show that focused primarily on Amazon’s Kindle, a wireless, portable reading device.

Bezos noted that Blue Origin’s first development vehicle — the Goddard — has been flown to low-altitude several times from a company owned 200,000 acre launch complex in western Texas. To date, the tight-lipped Blue Origin group has only publicized the November 13, 2006 first flight of that craft.

“We are now working on a second development vehicle,” Bezos said. “There will be at least one more development vehicle after that…at least, I don’t know, maybe it’ll be more.”

Blue Origin is building a vertical takeoff/vertical landing spacecraft that will take three or more astronauts to the edge of space, Bezos said.

Dubbed the New Shepard program — paying homage to the 1961 suborbital flight of Mercury astronaut, Alan Shepard — Bezos said that Blue Origin’s effort is built on taking one step at a time. The company’s motto, he emphasized, is Gradatim Ferociter, “step by step, ferociously.”

“We’re not in any hurry…because we’re trying to build a very safe, well-engineered vehicle. [I] don’t see any reason to rush on this,” Bezos told Rose.

In building a suborbital, tourist-carrying vessel, Bezos said that he doesn’t know how big the public space tourism market is.

“People have done studies that have tried to size this market. But I’m highly skeptical of such studies because you don’t really know until you do it,” Bezos explained. “But I do think this can be made into a viable business. You have to be very long-term oriented,” he said.

People who complained about a seven year-long investment in Amazon, Bezos said, would be horrified by Blue Origin.

Bezos said he’s looking forward to his own flight into space, on a Blue Origin vehicle.

“I will go. I definitely will go. I can’t wait actually,” Bezos concluded.

Chinese space officials are ready to flip Chang’e-1’s scientific instrument switch to the on position. The spacecraft has undergone a series of shakeouts since swinging into polar circular orbit around the Moon on November 7.

On Monday, the probe begins its year-long campaign of studying the Moon with a suite of devices, including a camera that is expected to relay its first image of the lunar landscape late this month. A recent report has indicated that first pictures are to be taken November 26.

Experts at the China National Space Administration (CNSA) feel that there’s enough fuel aboard Chang’e-1 that an extended mission — beyond the year of active duty — is likely.

The $187 million spacecraft was sent moonward on October 24.

The orbiter is one element of a CNSA plan that calls for landing a rover on the Moon in 2012, followed five years later by a hunter/gatherer rover involved in returning to Earth select lunar samples.

Meanwhile, news outlets in China are reporting progress in constructing that country’s fourth satellite launch facility - near Wenchang City on the southern Chinese island of Hainan.

The sprawling center — including a space science theme park — is to be sited near the equator. Its location, news accounts point out, would enable the lofting of geosynchronous satellites, place spacecraft into polar orbit, launch space stations, as well as toss probes into deep space.

Consider it as an eccentric mix of NASA, lawsuits and investigative “truth-seekers” delving into UFOs.

Under a settlement of a lawsuit against the space agency, NASA is diving into hundreds of documents in several locations to provide copies of what they find to Leslie Kean, an investigative journalist with the Coalition for Freedom of Information (CFi).

Kean has been seeking documents about the crash of an unknown object in Pennsylvania that occurred in 1965, now over forty years ago. During that time period, witnesses eyed a fireball in the evening sky, reportedly a controlled, albeit crash-landing, followed by a systematic military recovery of a spacecraft-like object. All of this adds-up to fueling a great UFO story and controversial cover-up saga.

NASA has entered into a mutual agreement with Kean to conduct an additional search for responsive agency records, foregoing a more formal court process. The space agency negotiated re-looking at records between the years of 1962 and 1967.

NASA has also agreed to seek any agency records that explain, describe, mention, name, reference or discuss such items as Kecksburg, Pennsylvania; December 9 or 10, 1965; Cosmos 96 - an errant Russian Venus lander that crashed to Earth after launching; “fragology”; UFOs; and/or Richard M. Schulherr, a purported official of Project Moondust - an effort that dispatched recovery teams into crash sites of fallen space objects.

If you’re a high-definition TV aficionado in Canada, you’re in for a treat: HD video from a Japanese moon probe.

The Discovery Channel Canada is airing a half-hour special tonight at 8 p.m. EST (check local listings) to broadcast Return to the Moon: The First Images – a look at high-definition video of Earth’s neighbor recorded by Japan’s Kaguya lunar orbiter.

Launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in September, Kaguya and its two mini-satellites are circling the moon to conduct an in-depth survey of the lunar surface, subsurface and gravitational field. The probe is also equipped to record high-definition video and images of the moon and the Earth as it rises above the lunar surface.

JAXA has already released its first high-definition images taken by Kaguya. Japanese television broadcaster NHK will air a live program later today that will precede Discovery Channel Canada’s broadcast, which will occur during its Daily Planet science magazine show.

Former Apollo 12 moonwalker Alan Bean and researcher Junichi Watanabe, of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, will weigh in on Kaguya’s HD video and imagery during Return to the Moon. You can learn more about the show (or if you’re stuck in the U.S., live vicariously) by clicking here.

Tough luck for the rest of us here in the U.S., but there is hope.

Discovery Channel Canada also produced the Mars Rising science miniseries about a manned mission to the red planet, which is airing now in the U.S. on the Science Channel.

So perhaps the moon will follow suit.

There’s discussion regarding creation of a Mexican Space Agency - or AEXA, for short. The Mexican Senate must first deliberate on the matter, before such an organization obtains legal status.

The bill for the creation of AEXA would incorporate Mexico within the international space community. Mexican Space Agency goals are several, but would include selecting technological alternatives for solving specific issues in that country. Also, information and technology obtained in all space science fields and other related arenas would be better coordinated.

Furthermore, AEXA would raise awareness regarding space matters that boost national economy, education, culture and community life in general.

The Mexican Space Agency would also work with Mexican firms to bolster the country’s competence in a host of areas, from meteorology, telecommunications, disaster prevention, and remote sensing to space robotics and exobiology.

Check out the world’s first high-definition movies - shot on location at the Moon.

Japan’s Kaguya lunar explorer carried out onboard high-definition television (HDTV) from about 62 miles (100 kilometers) away from the Moon. The image taking was performed twice on October 31, according to officials at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NHK, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation that developed the camera system.

The movie consists of two sequences - one shot over the western region of Oceanus Procellarum. The other is a fly over of the Moon’s north pole region, flying over the northern part of Oceanus Procellarum to the north pole.

Kaguya is in excellent shape as it circles the Moon - just joined by China’s mooncraft that just entered its working orbit of roughly 186 miles (300 kilometers) above the lunar landscape.

Take a look at that movie by going here:

http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/11/20071107_kaguya_movie_e.html

Tonight and early Wednesday are your last chances to search the night sky for NASA’s space shuttle Discovery before its planned landing tomorrow.

Depending on where you are, and of course weather conditions, you can spot Discovery and the International Space Station fly across the night sky, but you better search fast. Discovery is set to land Wednesday at 1:02 p.m. EST (1802 GMT). (Click here for live mission coverage.)

Here’s a handy primer on hunting for Discovery and the ISS by SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist Joe Rao, who recommends you visit NASA’s Sightings Page, among others, for specific times and dates to aid in your spacecraft hunt.

In general, it looks like Discovery is leading the ISS by either a few seconds or minutes depending on where you are, though most viewing opportunities - they’re listed as Local Time at your location - seem to be occurring just before dawn locally. NASA provides the approach path and maximum elevation in terms of degrees. For example, straight up above your head is 90 degrees, while 0 degrees is on the horizon in any direction.

Bad luck for us SPACE.com reporters here at our New York office. The best we can hope for is a pass that rises about 55 degrees over the horizon coming out of the south-southwest, a bit difficult to spot if you have to peek through skyscrapers and a light-polluted sky.

NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas and Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. - where staff writer Dave Mosher is covering Discovery’s return - seem worse off, with viewing opportunities hitting their maximum elevations between 15 and 12 degrees above the horizon respectively.

My folks and friends in Stockton, California, meanwhile, have the opportunity for a primo seat for an ISS overflight at about 5:07 a.m. PST (1307 GMT) tomorrow, when it hits and 83-degree elevation (nearly directly overhead) for a brief three minutes.

If you live in America’s Heartland, you might even get a chance to see Discovery pass overhead as it reenters the Earth’s atmosphere. For the first time since NASA’s 2003 Columbia accident, a shuttle is flying back to Earth over the continental United States.

Bryan Lunney, Discovery’s reentry flight director, encouraged folks to check whether the shuttle will pass over their home states by viewing NASA’s ground track maps available here.

“I would say it’s worth looking for, at least in the middle and near the end,” Lunney said today. “So I would say go give it a shot.”

While covering Discovery’s STS-120 mission, I and several fellow reporters were treated to a beautiful pass over the JSC parking lot. As NASA counted down to launch its Dawn asteroid probe, the ISS and its Expedition 15 crew passed silently over my home in Jersey City last September.

Hunting for manned spacecraft in the night sky is both fun and frightening when you remember that, no matter how beautiful that bright moving light might seem, it houses living, breathing people protected by only inches of glass and aluminum from quite possibly the harshest environment humans have explored.

China’s Chang’e Moon probe braked itself into lunar orbit early Monday morning, according to officials for the China National Space Administration (CNSA).

The spacecraft was dispatched to the Moon back on October 24 from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern province of Sichuan.

The 2,350 kilogram spacecraft is loaded with experiments, including a stereo camera, a laser altimeter, a microwave detector - with one of four objectives to create a three-dimensional survey of the Moon’s surface.

China’s lunar orbiter project, according to that country’s space officials, is priced at $187 million, with the project initiated at the start of 2004.

Just as the lunar probe made its way into Moon orbit, Chinese space officials have begun broaching the prospect of using a Long March 3B rocket to carry out the country’s second-stage Moon mission - a robotic lunar landing.

China’s three-step Moon exploration program involves launching a Moon rover in the 2012 time frame, followed by another lunar rover dedicated to returning to Earth samples of lunar regolith some five years later.