J.J. Abrams was a busy man in 2015 with the blockbuster space drama Star Wars: The Force Awakens and a seeming endless line of new projects emerging from his production company Bad Robot, but it was eventually time to come back down to earth as he turned his attention to a series of web-only documentaries about a Google-backed race to the moon – the Google Lunar X Prize.

The new series is which is directed by documentary filmmaker Orlando von Einsiedel (“We Ride“), follows the dreams, trials and tribulations of 16 teams vying for $30 million in prizes to see if they can successfully land and operate a privately developed robotic spacecraft on the moon before December 31st 2017.

“The teams come from all walks of life and range from Silicon Valley tech experts, to hackers in Germany, to IT specialists in India, to a father and son in a spare bedroom in Vancouver,” X Prize spokesman Eric Desatnik.

“Despite the differences in their personal stories, they are united by their passion for space exploration and what making space accessible to the everyman might mean for our future.”

Only three nations we know of have successfully run space programs which have made it to the moon; the United States, the former Soviet Union; and China.

It is indeed exciting to think that the technological ambitions once limited to the most powerful nation states in the world are now not that far beyond technical savvy civilians of any nation. We as a gloabally connected society can now work together using our collective intelligence to take mankinds first steps out into the cosmos.

Abrams’ series titled “Moon Shot” is a 9-part series featuring with each film being about seven minutes long. The entire series (time for a binge session) first airs on March 15 on Google Play and on March 17 on YouTube.

Want to know more about The Google Lunar X Project the just click this link.