US government approves first private moon mission

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Several government bodies of the United States of America have authorized the commercial American company Moon Express to conduct unmanned missions to the moon in the coming years.

Moon Express announces the news on its website. The company aims to return raw materials, precious metals and stones to the earth in the short term. Under the Space Treaty, companies are obliged to request permission from their home countries when a space mission goes beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. Satellites and the International Space Station, for example, are in orbit so low around the Earth that permission is not necessary. Moon Express submitted the application on April 8 of this year and it was approved by NASA, the FAA and the White House, among others.

It is also remarkable that the United States did sign the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, but not the Moon Treaty. In fact, the vast majority of countries on Earth have not signed that treaty. That treaty, for example, requires measures to prevent accidental damage to the environment of the moon. In addition, the Lunar Convention prescribes that mining and allocation of resources from the moon be done under an international regime.

Moon Express plans to participate in Google’s Lunar X competition, which was announced in 2007. The aim of the competition is to send a privately funded space mission to the moon, have a vehicle travel 500 meters there and send a gigabyte of photo and video material back to Earth. The deadline for this is currently December 31, 2017. The first team to succeed will win $20 million. MoonEx competes with the Israeli company SpaceIL. The first private space mission was successfully carried out in 2004.

Moon Express has contracted with New Zealand’s Rocket Lab for the launch of its spacecraft. According to a Space.com article, MoonEx’s MX-1 lunar lander is “relatively small” to ensure it fits Rocket Lab’s 16-meter-long, 1.2-meter-wide Electron rocket. The companies have multiple launches planned, each costing $4.9 million. These first missions aim to collect the prize money from Google. The landers are too small to mine on the moon and there is no way to return. According to an interview with Ars Technica, MoonEx currently has $30 million in cash for the mission and is looking for another $25 million.

Images: Moon Express & Rocket Lab via Ars Technica

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