Private Moon Landing Scheduled for 2017
The first private moon landing could be just two years away.
California-based company Moon Express, which aims to fly commercial missions to the moon and help unlock its resources, has signed a five-launch deal with Rocket Lab, with the first two robotic liftoffs scheduled to take place in 2017.
These uncrewed launches — three of which are firmly on the books, with the other two optional at the moment — will blast Moon Express' MX-1 lander into space aboard Rocket Lab's 52.5-foot-tall (16 meters) Electron rocket. The goal is to test out the MX-1 and its systems, making sure the spacecraft can land softly on the moon, move about the lunar surface, grab samples and return them to Earth. [Moon Express: A Private Lunar Lander in Pictures]
"The holy grail of our company is to provide, to prove, a full-services capability — not just landing, but coming back from the moon," said Moon Express co-founder and CEO Bob Richards, who announced the new launch deal today (Oct. 1) at the Space Technology & Investment Summit in San Francisco.
If the MX-1 nails its landing on the first mission, "we're going to be inspired to try a sample-return," Richards told Space.com. "I don't know if we'll do that on the second mission, but I sure hope we're trying it by the third mission, if all is going that well."
The two optional launches provide some insurance for Moon Express in case the first three flights don't go entirely according to plan, Richards said.
The contract puts Moon Express in position to possibly win the Google Lunar X Prize, a $30 million competition to land a privately funded robotic spacecraft on the moon by the end of 2017. The first team to do this — and have the craft move 1,640 feet (500 m) and beam high-definition video and images back to Earth as well — will win the $20 million grand prize. (The second team to accomplish these goals gets $5 million; another $5 million is available for meeting certain other milestones.)
Sixteen teams remain in the running for the Google Lunar X Prize, so the outcome remains very much up in the air. For example, one team, Astrobotic, signed a contract in 2011 to launch its lunar lander aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Astrobotic representatives have said they plan to launch in 2016.
