The company hopes to put robots on the moon’s South Pole by 2020
Moon Express, a former Google Lunar X Prize competitor developing commercial lunar landers, has raised $12.5 million to further develop its aspiration to be the first private company to venture to the Moon.
Moon Express Chief Executive Bob Richards said that the funding will support redevelopment of Launch Complex (LC) 17 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, a former Delta 2 launch site that the company is leasing from the Air Force to serve as a spacecraft development and test centre.
“The $10 million will allow us to complete key renovations at LC-17 and pull the trigger on ordering long-lead flight hardware and building the spacecraft for our maiden flight, which will be synced to coincide with customer schedules for their payload readiness,” Richards said in an Oct. 1 email.
Moon Express received the green light for pursuing its 2017 lunar mission following in depth consultations with the FAA, the White House, the State Department, NASA and other federal agencies.
Richards added that July 2020 is a “reasonable goal” for that first mission.
A $2.5 million bridge round was led by Miami-based Minerva Capital Group. $10 million of a planned $20 million Series B round was led by an undisclosed lead investor.
The company plans to build a robotic outpost on the moon and return a sample of moon dust to Earth by 2020.
“Outpost” is a bit of a strong word. Moon Express isn't planning to construct any lunar habitations or anything like that. Instead, their plan consists of sending robots to the moon in three missions.
The first, which they’re branding as “Lunar Scout,” will consist of Moon Express’s first launch. In this mission, a lander will hop around the lunar surface, deploying a small telescope and a laser range finder. This was the mission they planned for winning the XPrize competition.
The second expedition, dubbed “Lunar Outpost,” will send robots to the moon’s South Pole, where water is frozen inside deep dark craters. The higher altitudes receive nearly constant sunlight, and provide nonstop communications with Earth. In this part of the mission, the robots will prospect for water and minerals for future mining, and carry various research instruments. Since the U.S. doesn’t currently have any robots operating on the surface, Moon Express is branding this as an outpost.
Phase three is called “Harvest Moon” because that’s what the robots will be doing. By 2020, the company hopes to send a lander to the moon, scoop up some moon dust, load it into a small return vehicle, and send it back to Earth, as shown in the video below. “The lunar samples brought back will be the only privately owned Moon materials on Earth,” says a press release, “and will be used to benefit science as well as commercial purposes.”
“We’re excited about the new U.S. space policy to return to the moon in a sustainable way with commercial partners and we look forward to working with NASA and other space agencies in exploring Earth’s eighth continent,” Richards said in the statement.
The funding may also ease doubts about the company’s future. There had been industry speculation that the company was struggling, exacerbated by a legal battle with a former partner, Intuitive Machines, that led to a $4.1 million verdict against Moon Express early this year. That verdict is frozen pending a ruling by the presiding judge on a motion for a mistrial, Richards said.
Further Reading: Cape Canaveral’s LC-17 demolished after decades of service