A private space company you probably don't know has enough money to land on the moon

A personal firm you in all probability have not heard of simply introduced that it has the cash it must shoot for the moon, actually.

Moon Express — one of many groups competing to win the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize — says that it has now raised sufficient cash to construct, check and launch its uncrewed MX-1E spacecraft to the lunar floor earlier than the top of this yr. 

“We now have all of the assets in place to shoot for the moon,” Moon Categorical CEO Bob Richards stated in a press release. 

In complete, the corporate has raised greater than $45 million in personal funding for its moonshot.

“Our objective is to broaden Earth’s social and financial sphere to the moon, our largely unexplored eighth continent, and allow a brand new period of low value lunar exploration and improvement for college kids, scientists, area businesses and business pursuits,” Richards added.

Moon Categorical plans to do that by launching a collection of missions beginning this yr that may assist them show out the know-how wanted to land on the moon and ultimately even mine it for assets like water. 

The Google Lunar X Prize was designed to assist help the comparatively nascent personal business by giving out its multimillion greenback prize to the primary personal group to land a robotic craft on the moon that may transfer 500 meters and beam again video and pictures from the lunar floor.

In the meanwhile, 4 rivals together with Moon Categorical have confirmed rides on rockets sure for the moon earlier than the top of 2017. 

Moon Categorical has booked a journey on the personal firm Rocket Lab's Electron rocket, which has but to launch on its first check flight. (Electron ought to make its maiden voyage this year if all goes based on plan.)

“We all know that there are trillions of dollars of valuable assets on the moon, and we will now search to unlock these assets with exponential applied sciences for the good thing about all of humanity, enabling entrepreneurs to do what solely superpowers have executed earlier than," Moon Categorical co-founder Naveen Jain stated within the assertion.

Moon Categorical hit an enormous milestone in 2016 when it turned the primary firm to get approval from the U.S. authorities to fly a spacecraft to the moon's floor. 

This can be a massive step as a result of, till now, solely nations have aimed for the moon and efficiently landed there. 

In the meanwhile, Moon Categorical is planning to launch 5 flights aboard the Electron rocket.