The Lirpa Sloof Foundation is pleased to announce the LunaCaching Prize, a US$100 million award for a private team to land a probe on the Moon. The winning team must recover a cryptographic token from the landing site of the TubeRat 1 probe, which landed on the Moon on March 31, 2005 with funding from the Lirpa Sloof Foundation. The builders of the TubeRat 1 probe, TubeRat Aerospace, are located in Gualala, California.

Dr Lirpa Sloof, founder of the Sloof Foundation said, "We're delighted with the success of TubeRat Aerospace's landing. It's an unbelievable accomplishment. We're very happy with our selection. And it comes just in time for our announcements at the beginning of the calendar quarter."

The Foundation has selected the Stratofox Aerospace Tracking Team of San Jose, California as the judges for the LunaCaching Prize. Dr Sloof pointed out that, "Stratofox was one of the winners of our Sloof Amateur Project Grants last year. They went on to recover the first amateur rocket launched to space last May, even before we were able to complete the aircraft donation to them."

About the Sloof Foundation

The Sloof Foundation is a non-profit philanthropic organization which supports science and technology research projects. The foundation is based in Las Vegas, Nevada and was founded by Dr Lirpa Sloof. The Foundation's primary focus is on university research projects. In 2003-2004 the foundation offered a quarterly grant to amateur projects which provided them with tools of the professionals in their subject area. The foundation offers prizes for scientific achievements, starting with the LunaCaching Prize. The foundation's web site is at www.sloof.us.