Will Man Return To The Moon? Private Company Raises $20 Million For 2017 Trip To Lunar Surface

Moon Express will launch a spacecraft to the moon in 2017, according to reports. The Cape Canaveral-based company announced last week it had raised $20 million in funding for a mission that would send a robotic spacecraft to the moon’s surface, which would make it the first private entity to travel outside the Earth’s orbit.

Now that funding for the space exploration is in place, Moon Express is in an even better position to win Google’s Lunar Xprize of up to $30 million, which will be awarded to the first three teams to successfully place a spacecraft on the moon’s surface and transmit high-definition video and images of the moon’s surface back to Earth. Moon Express is one of 16 teams competing for the monetary prize, which will be used to fund future space missions.

“We now have all the resources in place to shoot for the Moon,” Moon Express’ CEO Bob Richards said in a statement. “Our goal is to expand Earth’s social and economic sphere to the Moon, our largely unexplored eighth continent, and enable a new era of low-cost lunar exploration and development for students, scientists, space agencies and commercial interests.”

Although companies only have to send a spacecraft to travel the moon’s surface and take videos and images for Google's competition, Moon Express has its heights set on even further explorations on the moon. The company’s co-founder and chairman, Naveen Jain, said in December the spacecraft would mine the moon for minerals and bring resources, metals and moon rocks back to the Earth for further examination during the 2017 mission.

Moon Express was the first private company to receive Federal Aviation Administration approval to send a spacecraft to the moon. Following their July 2016 approval, NASA announced in November they were hoping to send small payloads developed by private companies to the moon to gain more insight on “lunar resource potential and the lunar environment and its effect on human life” with hopes research provided would help fuel plans to send people back to the moon again by the 2030s.

With the latest $20 million payout, Moon Express has now raised more than $45 million from various individuals and investment groups for future space explorations

Moon Express’ MX-1 spacecraft will travel to the moon sometime during 2017.