First, there’s just an empty field, and the echoing sounds of a hammer striking rock. Then after one last, loud blow, we suddenly cut to a sparse warehouse, where the hammer lands on a bolt attached to a strange-looking contraption. Parts of it are covered in gold foil. "Nice job," the bespectacled foreman says to an engineer. If the apparatus they’re pounding into shape resembles nothing we’ve seen on Earth, that’s because it’s not meant for this world: This is a spacecraft, hacked together by regular humans, meant to go to the moon.
So opens the dramatic trailer for Moon Shot, an upcoming nine-episode documentary web series being produced by J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot that aims to tell the stories of 16 teams competing for the Google Lunar X Prize. First announced in 2007, the Google-sponsored initiative called on privately-funded spaceflight teams to aim to be the first to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon. The first team to complete a lunar landing, have their rover travel 500 meters, and beam back high-def images to Earth gets $30 million in prizes. Currently, there are 16 teams still scrambling to meet the December 2017 mission deadline, with two teams having already secured launch contracts to the moon for next year.
All of which makes for some nice fodder for Moon Shot, which is being produced by Bad Robot, along with Academy Award-nominated director Orlando von Einsiedel. It may seem odd for the director of Star Wars: The Force Awakens to be involved in what is essentially a slick and highly-produced promo series for Google and the X Prize Foundation. But, then again, Abrams is already in the streaming game as a producer on Hulu's 11.22.63, and with the built-in appeal of humans shooting for the moon, the series has the drama to potentially be a hit.
The nine short films will debut—for free, of course—March 15 on Google Play, and on YouTube on March 17. Check out the first trailer for the documentary series above.
