MOUNTAIN VIEW, California: More than three decades after the last Apollo astronauts roamed the lunar surface, disparate universities, open-source engineers and quixotic aerospace start-ups are planning to start their own robotic missions to the Earths barren cousin.

The return to the moon is part of the Google Lunar X Prize, a competition sponsored by Google with $30 million in prizes for the first two teams to land a robotic rover on the moon and send images and other data back home.

At Googles headquarters here Thursday, 10 teams from five countries announced their intention to participate in the competition.

They include a team led by William Whitaker, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a renowned roboticist; an affiliation of four universities and two major aerospace companies in Italy; and one group comprised of a loose association of engineers coordinating their efforts online.

At the event, the new lunar explorers shared some high-minded goals, like reigniting moon exploration and jump-starting an age of space commerce. “This is about developing a new generation of technology that is cheaper, can be used more often and will enable a new wave of explorers,” said Peter Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize Foundation.

Addressing the X Prize teams and journalists, Sergey Brin, Googles co-founder, compared his companys support of the competition to other companies sponsorship of yacht races. “The idea we can help spur the return to the moon and maybe even do it more quickly than some of the national plans is really exciting to me,” Brin said.

Google will pay $20 million to the first team that lands on the moon, sends a package of data back to Earth, then travels at least 500 meters and sends another data package. The second team to accomplish the goals will win $5 million. Bonuses are offered for feats like visiting a historic landing site and finding and detecting lunar ice, but the prize money starts to shrink if the mission is not accomplished by 2012.

Whitaker, of Carnegie Mellon, is leading a team that includes the University of Arizona and Raytheon, the military contractor. He said he planned to use kerosene and oxygen to fuel his rocket, and once it is on the moon, to send a rover to the site of the first moon landing in the Sea of Tranquillity. “Our extravaganza will be at Apollo 11,” he said.

The overall effort could cost tens of millions of dollars, he said, easily exceeding the size of the prize purse.

Fred Bourgeois, the head of Frednet, the group of engineers who are collaborating online in the manner of open-source software developers, said that his team is building a toaster-size lunar lander that, once on the moon, will unleash a cell phone-size rover. “We think its a lot cheaper to put a cellphone on the moon than an SUV,” Bourgeois said.

NASA has announced plans to return astronauts to the moon as early as 2020. Though robotic missions are easier to achieve, the X Prize competitors still face formidable challenges, not to mention extravagant costs. Generating the rocket thrust to escape Earths gravity is expensive and risky. Once on the moon, robotic rovers may have to survive temperatures that can drop to 250 degrees below zero.

There was some discord at the event. A video produced by the X Prize Foundation, promoting reasons to revisit the moon, described the mining of silicon, which is abundant in the lunar soil. The video claimed that the material could be used in space to construct solar-powered satellites that would transmit cheap and abundant energy to Earth.

In a question-and-answer session, Harold Rosen, an inventor of the geostationary satellite who is heading his own X Prize team, called that claim “one of the most outrageous ideas Ive ever heard.” He added: “I can think of about a hundred thousand more efficient ways of getting energy on Earth than that.”

The X Prize Foundation is a nonprofit group based in Los Angeles..

Responding to a wave of defective toys and other goods, the U.S. Senate has approved a measure that would overhaul the nations consumer product laws and strengthen the safety agency that oversees the marketplace.

Besides increasing the staff and budget of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the legislation passed Thursday would create a public database of complaints about products and would empower state prosecutors to take action if they believe the U.S. government is not doing enough to protect consumers in their states.

The congressional action marks the first major consumer product legislation in 18 years and comes as U.S. regulators struggle to oversee the explosive growth of foreign goods, many of which are imported from countries with less stringent safety standards.

Goods made in China, particularly, have come under increasing scrutiny after a wave of recalls of products ranging from toys to toothpaste.

The Senate bill, which had the support of consumer groups, was adopted 79 to 13 over the objections of the administration of President George W. Bush and of major manufacturers. It will now be sent to a conference committee to be reconciled with a more modest measure endorsed by the White House and the manufacturers.

An administration statement issued before the Senate voted on the bill criticized it and embraced the House of Representatives version, saying it “takes positive steps toward further ensuring that Americans are protected from unsafe products.” The consumer groups say the House measure, approved unanimously last December, is a concession to the manufacturing industry.

In recent weeks, the Senate bill was watered down to gain the support of a core group of Republicans, most notably the senior Republican on the commerce committee, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and Senator Susan Collins of Maine. The bill was sponsored by Senator Mark Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas, who said it was “more comprehensive and provides for greater transparency and enforcement” than the House bill. The Senate on Tuesday rejected the House bill by a vote of 57 to 39.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has been hampered by the failure of the White House to fill a vacancy on the three-member commission, which has prevented the agency from issuing new rules or penalizing companies that violate the existing ones. The commission has a staff of about 400, roughly half its size in the 1980s. Fifteen inspectors monitor all imports of consumer products under the supervision of the agency, a marketplace that last year was valued at $614 billion.

Both the House and Senate legislation would increase the budget and staffing of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and would grant it the authority to issue rules and penalize companies even though the agency lacks a quorum. Both measures would also significantly reduce the acceptable levels of lead in toys.

But the Senate measure goes farther. It would create a public database of complaints; it would permit the attorneys general to seek court injunctions if products endanger residents in their states and the U.S. government is not acting; and it would make mandatory many of the toy safety standards that are now voluntary and in so doing, require that toys are tested to comply with a comprehensive set of rules.

The Senate bill would also increase the possible maximum penalty for violations to $20 million from the current $1.25 million. And it would make it a crime for any company that sells a product that has been recalled.

During a week of debate, Republican critics led by Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina attacked the legislation for being too onerous on businesses and creating “a playground for plaintiffs attorneys.” The Democratic and Republican supporters of the measure responded with a parade of stories and pictures of children who were killed or injured from a variety of defective products like cribs that collapsed, toys made with lead and small magnet toys that were swallowed.

The White House announced a lengthy list of objections to the Senate legislation. It criticized one provision that would give an enforcement role to state prosecutors and another that would extend whistle-blower protections to company employees who disclose safety violations. The administration also opposed provisions that would create a public database of consumer safety complaints, and that would require that the laboratories that test certain childrens products for safety be independent and privately owned.

“These provisions threaten to burden American consumers and industry in unproductive ways, and may actually harm a well-functioning product safety system,” the administration statement said. The statement did not mention a threat of veto.

(03-07) 04:18 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) —

National Public Radio’s chief executive is stepping down, the network’s board of directors announced Thursday.

Ken Stern, who spent 10 years with the company as chief operating officer and chief executive officer, is leaving by “mutual agreement,” the board said in a statement. Chairman Dennis L. Haarsager will serve as interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent replacement.

The board did not give a reason for Stern’s departure.

Howard Stevenson, the board’s vice chairman, praised Stern’s contributions to NPR.

“During his tenure, Ken was instrumental in improving NPR’s financial health and for initiating important work extending NPR’s reach to various new platforms including satellite and digital distribution,” he said. “Under his watch, NPR News significantly increased the number of staff, foreign and domestic bureaus and areas of coverage.”

Stern said in a statement that he was proud of NPR’s journalistic and financial achievements during his tenure.

“I have enormous respect for the management team I assembled and know they will keep NPR on this successful path,” he added.

Founded in 1970, NPR is a nonprofit membership organization that distributes news, talk and entertainment programming via some 860 independently operated public radio stations around the country.