To send a spacecraft to the Moon in 2016.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BENGALURU: Moon Express, the aerospace company co-founded by Indian American billionaire Naveen Jain, has tied up with NASA to develop a robotic spacecraft that can mine the surface of the Moon.
The California-based Moon Express plans to send a series of robotic spacecraft to the Moon for exploration and commercial development. The maiden spacecraft as part of this series is scheduled to take off to the Moon sometime in 2016.
Earlier during the year, Moon Express successfully tested a prototype of its moon lander called MTV-1X in the Kennedy Space Center. According to Jain, with the success of the prototype and the series of such tests planned later for the year, Moon Express will be prepared to send the moon lander by 2016.
He added that Moon Express is in the process of closing an agreement with Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral so that the later can be used as the launch pad for the development of the moon lander and for other testing purposes.
Naveen was quoted by NBC News saying “Clearly, NASA has an amazing amount of expertise when it comes to getting to the moon, and it wants to pass that knowledge on to a company like ours that has the best chance of being successful.”
Jain also added “We went to the moon 50 years ago, yet today we have more computing power with our iPhones than the computers that sent men into space. That type of exponential technological growth is allowing things to happen that was never possible before.”
The research done on the surface of the Moon have established that the earth’s natural satellite is a store house of precious elements such as gold, cobalt, iron, palladium, tungsten and helium-3, a very rare resource that can propel the future nuclear reactors without producing radioactive waste.
The new mission is supposed to be a one way trip and the lander won’t be returning back to earth but, Moon Express is confident that they can send landers that can return and be reused.
Jain sees a future – 15 to 20 years ahead – when moon will become a stopover for other interplanetary missions, enabling easier travel and exploration.