The company submitted the application for the lunar mission back on April 8, 2016-reviews by the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Federal Communications Commission followed.
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The approval has been granted for a planned 2017 mission, which will see Moon Express attempt to land a robotic lunar lander on the moon’s surface.
While on the moon, the probe will not only take photos and film video to transmit to Earth.
Moon Express says that this trip to the moon will allow it to evaluate its resources and plan future trips.
Moon Express wants to deliver scientific instruments via robots using a rocket built by a Southern California startup.
In a first, the Federal Aviation Administration has given license to a private United States company, co-founded by an Indian American, to launch a spacecraft and land on moon in 2017.
The Federal Aviation Administration has given license to a private USA company founded by Naveen Jain, Dr Bob Richards, and Dr Barney Pell.
“In the immediate future, we envision bringing precious resources, metals, and moon rocks back to earth”, he said. She is an active blogger and erstwhile facilitator of science and engineering programs for children.
“The sky is not the limit for Moon Express – it is the launch pad”, Jain said on the company’s website.
A Florida-based company won U.S. government permission on Wednesday to send a robotic lander to the moon next year, the firm’s founder said, marking the first time the United States has cleared a private space mission to fly beyond Earth’s orbit.
Next year a U.S. startup will land on the moon.
The next businessman to address the FAA for an outer space mission license is likely to be Elon Musk and his Space Exploration Technologies (SET) company, which plans to launch a mission to Mars in 2018.
Even though Moon Express got permission, the next step is building all the necessary parts to get to the Moon.
“The moon has been collecting the asteroid material for the past four billion years and has an abundance of real Earth elements and water”, Jain said.
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Moon Express’s mission will, of course, be one of peaceful exploration.
