By: Bobby Chen and Jack Lukow

Penn State’s Lunar Lion team is shooting for the moon for a number of reasons, among them the chance to win $20 million in prize money from the Google Lunar X Prize, a joint venture between Google and the X Prize Foundation.

At the Schreyer Honors College’s Shaping the Future Summit on Tuesday, X Prize founder Peter Diamandis praised and endorsed Penn State’s mission to not only become the first entity besides the governments of the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China to land on the moon, but also to become the first university in the world to ever accomplish that feat.

We were able to interview Diamandis about his thoughts on what Lunar Lion is capable of accomplishing and Penn State’s future role in the realm of space exploration: