A new nine-episode documentary series will follow teams as they compete to be the first people to land a privately-built robotic spacecraft on the surface of the moon.

The teams are all going after the Google Lunar X Prize. $30 million will go to the first team to land a robot on the moon that can move at least 500 meters and send photos and video back to Earth by December 31, 2017.

Executive producer J.J. Abrams and director Orlando von Einsiedel are working with Google and X Prize to create the documentary web series, called Moon Shot.

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"This character-driven, emotional, awe-inspiring series of 9 short films will follow a selection of the teams currently racing to complete their missions," the Moon Shot synopsis says.

"It will explore the lives of their charismatic, quirky members, the sacrifices they have made to get to where they are today, and crucially, what drives them on this incredible journey."

The goal of the X Prize is to help bolster the commercial spaceflight industry, opening up the moon and other parts of the solar system to private companies that have never been able to reach it before.

The X Prize competition has been heating up in the past few months.

A couple of the 16 teams still in competition, including Moon Express and SpaceIL, have launch contracts to fly to the moon with various launch providers.

At least one team, Astrobotic, hopes to have something akin to "NASCAR on the moon" when they make their journey to the lunar surface, potentially opting to bring multiple teams to the moon aboard one rocket and then race it out from there.

Moon Shot premieres on Google Play on March 15 and YouTube on March 17.

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