Moon Express embarked on their mission to the moon in pursuit of the Google Lunar X Prize, an worldwide competition with a $30 million prize going to whichever private company can send the vehicle to the Moon’s surface.
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Until now, only the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union and China have sent spacecraft to the moon.
At present, commercial ventures have gone as far out as geosynchronous orbit, the telecommunication satellites that fly 22,236 miles above the Earth.
The FAA already oversees commercial rocket launches in the U.S. For the Moon Express proposal, the FAA took the lead in conducting an interagency review, which according to Moon Express included the White House, NASA, the State Department and other federal agencies.
The US-based private spaceflight company intends to send a probe to the Moon by 2017, however before they did this, they first required regulatory permission from the US government. “Ironically you had a great space resources act that says you can own what you get, but we’re in a situation where you can’t launch to go get it”.
If Moon Express would be successful in its mission, it could pave the way for other companies to start mining the moon for resources such as iron ore, water, rare earths and precious metals.
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The unprecedented interagency approval process was necessary for the simple reason that no serious request like Moon Express’s had ever been made.
The mission will take place in 2017 under which it will send a suitcase-sized lander to the moon. Because there was no legal and regulatory framework for how to approve or disqualify commercial missions to places beyond Earth’s orbit, Moon Express chose to work around this by essentially sharing more information with the federal government than it needed to.
The lander would launch on one of Los Angeles-based Rocket Lab’s Electron rockets.
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“Space travel is our only path forward to ensure our survival and create a limitless future for our children”, commented company co-founder Naveen Jain in a statement.
