Hey kiddo! Do you know what a prize is? It's like a reward you get for doing something really awesome, like winning a race or solving a hard puzzle.
The Ansari X Prize was a special kind of prize that was given out for something really special. It was meant for people who could make a spacecraft that could go up to space two times in a row in just two weeks, with at least three people on board.
But why was this prize so special? Well, going to space is really expensive, and only big organizations like governments or big companies can usually afford it. But the people who made the Ansari X Prize wanted to encourage regular people to try and make spaceships too! They thought that if anyone could make a spaceship that could do the things they asked for, it would show that space travel can be done by anyone, not just by rich and powerful people.
So, the prize was announced in 1996, and it became really popular. A lot of people started working on their own spaceships, trying to win the prize. And many years later, in 2004, a team called SpaceShipOne won the prize!
This was a really big deal because it showed that even regular people could come up with big ideas and do amazing things, just by working hard and believing in themselves. And it inspired many others to start working on their own dream projects too!