Keep an eye out for Odyssey Moon Ventures — one of the contenders in the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize competition — to announce they have partnered with NASA for development of a robotic lunar lander.

This new partnership was established via a Reimbursable Space Act Agreement signed with the NASA Ames Research Center, situated in Silicon Valley. The agreement has NASA providing technical data and engineering support to Odyssey Moon Ventures in support of the private group’s effort to develop its “MoonOne” robotic lander.

In return, Odyssey Moon Ventures will reimburse NASA Ames for the cost of providing the technical support and will share its technical data from its engineering tests and actual lunar missions with NASA.

The MoonOne lander will be adapted from a nifty bit of hardware being cultivated at NASA Ames - the Common Spacecraft Bus. I’ve seen this equipment myself - and a dedicated team at Ames has been working diligently on this multi-purpose gear, all made possible by Ames leader, Pete Worden.

Bob Richards, CEO of Odyssey Moon Ltd., told me that the partnership “is a strategic relationship that we believe has mutual benefit to NASA and Odyssey Moon.”

Odyssey Moon’s prime contractor is MDA - a leader in providing robotics on the space shuttle, the International Space Station, and more recently for satellite servicing and planetary exploration.