To get approval, the company had to develop its own temporary guidelines for federal oversight – there weren’t any existing regulations for commercial missions to another planet. Moon Express, founded in 2010 by billionaire tech entrepreneur Naveen Jain, just received FAA clearance to send a robotic probe to the moon’s surface to scout it for valuable resources.
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Although this particular mission has been given the green light, the FAA was clear in pointing out that any future requests from Moon Express or other operators will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. As per the contest, the first team to land a privately funded rover on the moon, travel 500 meters and transmit high definition video and images back to earth will win the $20 million grand prize.
United States startup company Moon Express said Wednesday it had received approval from the government to send an unmanned lander to the moon next year, in a first for private industry.
It took Moon Express about four months to get the final approval by the US government.
The FAA said in a statement that it has determined the launch of Moon Express’s MX-1E spacecraft “does not jeopardize public health and safety, safety of property, USA national security or foreign policy interests, or global obligations of the United States”. The company is set to launch its MX-1 lander atop the New Zealand experimental rocket Rocket Lab Electron Booster.
“This is the time when humanity is leaving the shores of Earth and all of the future will look back at this moment as the time we became a space-faring species”, said Moon Express CEO Bob Richards.
Citation: Showstack, R. (2016), Government OK’s Moon Express mission to the Moon, Eos, 97, doi:10.1029/2016EO057283.
On CNN, the co-founder of Moon Express also estimated that the company will carry men to the moon “within 10 to 15 years”.
Empowered by this government authorization, Moon Express will now be able to continue to make progress towards its ambitious goal of unlocking the resources of the Moon.
Moon Express is going where no private company has ever gone before – the moon.
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Until now, all private space company missions, such as those from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, have been limited to Earth orbit.
