Moon Express, based in Cape Canaveral, Florida, was founded in 2010.
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“The Moon Express 2017 mission approval is a landmark decision by the USA government and a pathfinder for private sector commercial missions beyond the Earth’s orbit”, said Dr.Bob Richards.
In the past, the trip has only been made by world government superpowers – the U.S., China and Russian Federation.
Commercial spacecraft have flown within the bounds of Earth’s orbit.
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.
When asked about the permissions the co-founder said as no private firm had traveled beyond Earth’s orbit and space. The mission seeks to unlock the “immense potential of the Moon’s valuable resources”, explained the company in a publicly released statement.
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But more than the prize, company officials say that it will be the opening of a profitable frontier for entrepreneurs.
Getting the United States government to agree to the mission wasn’t easy. As Moon Express notes on its website, water is “the oil of the solar system”, and the ability to access this vital resource off Earth would vastly reduce the cost of more ambitious deep space missions.
Until now, privately held companies were restricted to missions on or around Earth, meaning that, as Moon Express co-founder told Space.com’s Mike Wall, “this is not only a milestone, but really a threshold for the entire commercial space industry”. Those payloads could include mustard plants from NASA that the agency wants to use to test plant gestation on the moon and equipment, like new retro reflectors, that the University of Maryland hopes to use for various tests. The washing machine-sized vehicle would take hops across the lunar surface.
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The eventual goal of Moon Express is to mine the Moon for natural resources of economic value. Lunar X Prize will award the space venture with $20 million if it successfully lands the spacecraft on the moon, makes it travel 500 meters across the surface and sends high-definition images back to Earth.
