LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwire - Oct 11, 2012) - The space shuttle Endeavour will be traveling through the streets of Los Angeles to her new and final home at the California Science Center on Friday, October 12. It will bring a bittersweet end to a notable era in U.S. space exploration, but an exciting new era of privatized space exploration is already well under way.

"While we bid a fond farewell to the Space Shuttle program and the era of spaceflight it represents, I've never been more excited than now about our opportunities going forward," said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, which has conducted two multi-million-dollar prizes, helping spur massive private investment and research in space exploration in recent years.

"We're now in an era where space exploration no longer is only done by a few highly trained, government-employed specialists," Diamandis said. "Since 2001, we've seen the first space tourists, the first private space companies and even, earlier this year, the first privately developed and operated capsule to travel to the International Space Station."

"Sometimes, these private initiatives will work in cooperation with the government organizations that funded and conducted space travel in the past," Diamandis commented. "Sometimes they will operate independently of government involvement and support, potentially dramatically accelerating exploration and research opportunities."

The new era in private space exploration began in earnest in 2001, when Santa Monica investor Dennis Tito paid $20 million to Space Adventures (www.SpaceAdventures.com) to fly aboard a Russian Soyuz mission to the International Space Station. Many other private space efforts have happened since:

Pursuit of these X PRIZE Foundation competitions has spurred a flurry of investment and technological development by private companies trying to create reusable space vehicles.

In the process, they have helped create a private space industry that is an increasingly viable partner with public space agencies, so much so that SpaceX founder (and X PRIZE Trustee) Elon Musk told ABC's "Nightline" that his company expects to be able to send humans to Mars in "roughly 12 to 15 years."

"The X PRIZE Foundation can be proud of its role in helping midwife this Fourth Era of Spaceflight and Exploration," Diamandis said. "The opportunities before us are remarkable, and we intend to continue our special role in encouraging private investment and research to open the skies for us all."

ABOUT X PRIZE FOUNDATION Founded in 1995, the X PRIZE Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is the leading organization solving the world's Grand Challenges by creating and managing large-scale, high-profile, incentivized prize competitions that stimulate investment in research and development worth far more than the prize itself. The organization motivates and inspires brilliant innovators from all disciplines to leverage their intellectual and financial capital for the benefit of humanity. The X PRIZE Foundation conducts competitions in five Prize Groups: Education; Exploration; Energy & Environment; Global Development; and Life Sciences. Active prizes include the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, the $10 million Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Express Scripts, the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE, and the $2.25 million Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE. For more information, go to http://www.xprize.org.

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The Next Era in Space Travel and Exploration Continues as Endeavour's Final Flight Ends