From: The Electronic Telegraph, UK
04/12/95

Millennium space race for pennies from heaven

By Adrian Berry, Science Correspondent

THE Millennium Commission is considering staging a treasure hunt in space. The plan is to place twenty £1 coins - representing 2,000 pennies to mark the year 2000 - on the Moon and 19 other bodies in the inner solar system, with prizes awarded to those who return them to Earth.

Devised by a consortium led by the Glasgow-based Association in Scotland to Research into Astronautics (Astra), the purpose is to encourage privatised space travel.

Mr Duncan Lunan, Astra's president, said the coins, coded with computer chips, would be put into high Earth orbit and sent to different parts of the solar system. Each would have a "sail" of light-weight material of about 10,000 square yards, propelled by the pressure of sunlight.

"The coins will then be dropped on to the surface of a planet or asteroid," said Mr Duncan. "There will be no secret about where they are. The difficult part will be bringing them back to Earth.

"This will be a task for spaceships that do not exist today. So, although we hope to send off the coins by 2000, there are unlikely to be any winners until the next century."

The scheme, expected to cost £30 million, is to be funded by private backers with initial help from the Millennium Commission.

An investment fund would be set up to finance prizes. The first prize, which will almost certainly go to the person finding the coin on the Moon as it is the nearest, will get one twentieth of the fund, the second a nineteenth, and so forth. The value of the fund will also rise over time as investments grow. Mr Lunan said: "This is appropriate since each coin, being further away than the last, will be more difficult to collect."

"We hope to start the prize fund at £5 million, and so the prizes at first will only be worth £250,000. But their value could rise to millions."

Mr Lunan's group, partnered by the Light Year Consortium, another Glasgow body interested in space travel, and Braithwaite Telescopes, expects a decision from the Commission within two weeks.