The United States government has allowed a private company to make a trip to the moon, the first of its kind to be made by a private entity, as the government has never before allowed a private space mission beyond our planet’s orbit.
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But the regulations Moon Express drew up won’t affect hypothetical future commercial trips to the moon.
The California-based company plans to offer commercial lunar robotic transportation and data services and a long-term goal of mining the Moon for valuable elements.
The company plans for its MX-1 robotic lander to become the first commercial venture to extend beyond Earth’s orbit. “In the near future we want to bring back to Earth precious resources, lunar metals and stones”, said Naveen Jain.
Here’s to counting down to blast-off.
Moon Express – a privately financed Silicon Valley-based start-up founded in 2010 – announced on its website August 3 that it had secured federal approval for the flight.
So far, only US, Soviet and Chinese governments have successfully landed on the moon’s surface.
The company also hopes to win $20 million of Google Lunar X-prize – an worldwide contest to reward any privately funded mission to soft-land on the moon.
It marks a major development for the trio of American entrepreneurs who founded the company in 2010 with the aim of exploring the “eighth continent’s” resources.
To close its contracts, Moon Express routed its payload applications to the FAA, and was pored over by other federal agencies before finally getting the go signal on July 20, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. Until now, only governments have taken missions to the moon.
Although exclusive to the company, the approval will certainly serve as an important regulatory guide for deep-space commercial activity in general, said Moon Express co-founder and CEO Bob Richards.
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.
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“It has vast resources, trillions, quadrillions of dollars worth of resources, that could be used as we expand as a species into space to the moon and beyond”, Richards said. In fact, Moon Express has already bought a launch on a rocket named Electron from a New Zealand start-up called Rocket Lab.
