Moon Express was given the green light following long discussions with the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the White House, the State Department and Nasa.
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China is said to return to the Moon in 2017 with an unmanned spacecraft that will try to return to Earth with soil samples, something that hasn’t been attempted since the mid-1970s.
Joining a new trend of companies who are attempting to prepare for privately-owned space exploration, a Florida company has received approval from the USA federal government to launch into space and head to the moon.
The company now has no plans to send humans back to the Moon, but it does want to send a robotic lander by the end of 2017.
“We are now free to set sail as explorers to Earth’s eighth continent, the Moon, seeking new knowledge and resources to expand Earth’s economic sphere for the benefit of all humanity”, Richards added.
But before the mission was approved, it had faced a number of challenges since there is no framework yet to regulate private missions beyond the Earth’s orbit.
Moon Express is now in competition for the Google Lunar XPrize, which promises to award a $20 million grand prize to the first team to successfully land a privately funded rover on the moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit back high definition video and images. The probe itself will be launched atop a rocket produced by a US/Kiwi spaceflight startup called RocketLab. Moon Express submitted a formal request to the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation because this agency is in charge of regulating commercial rocket launches.
As well, the craft will attempt to use its thrusters to “hop” across the Moon’s surface and in doing so, claim the Google X-prize money.
Moon Express has been given the go-ahead by the United States government for a two-week mission which will include sending a lander to Earth’s satellite late next year.
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Working with Nasa they have announced a 2018 mission to Mars called Red Dragon, which will involve a craft many times larger that the MX-1.
