Becomes first private company to pursue a lunar mission.
By Jayshal Sood
Naveen Jain’s Moon Express has been approved to take maiden flights of its robotic spacecraft outside Earth’s orbit and land on the moon in 2017.
“The sky is not the limit for Moon Express – it is the Launchpad. This breakthrough ruling is another giant leap for humanity. Space travel is our only path forward to ensure our survival and create a limitless future for our children,” Naveen Jain, co-founder and chairman of Moon Express, Inc., said.
“In the immediate future, we envision bringing precious resources, metals, and Moon rocks back to Earth,” he added.
The billionaire entrepreneur anticipates that in the next couple of decades the Moon will complement Earth’s economy. “In 15 years, the Moon will be an important part of Earth’s economy, and potentially our second home. Imagine that,” Jain said in a Press statement.
It took Moon Express about four months to get the final approval by the U.S. government. The company applied for a 2017 commercial lunar mission to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and submitted its application on April 8, 2016.
“The Moon Express 2017 mission approval is a landmark decision by the U.S. government and a pathfinder for private sector commercial missions beyond the Earth’s orbit,” said Dr. Bob Richards, co-founder, and CEO, Moon Express.
Dr. Richards said, “We are now free to set sail as explorers to Earth’s eighth continent, the Moon, seeking new knowledge and resources to expand Earth’s economic sphere for the benefit of all humanity.”
The U.S. government’s approval for Moon Express would help pave the way for other private companies to explore extraterrestrial bodies. This decision opens an avenue for commercial lunar exploration and discovery. It would help unlock immense potential of the Moon’s valuable resources, the Press statement read.
The company’s CEO underscored the importance of the Moon and vast natural resources that it may offer. “The recent discovery of water on the Moon is an economic game changer for humanity’s future,” he said. “Water is the oil of the solar system, and the Moon has become a gas station in the sky.”
Headquartered in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Moon Express was founded in 2010 by Dr. Robert (Bob) Richards, Naveen Jain, and Dr. Barney Pell. The company aims to decode the mysteries related to the Moon and explore its resources.
Moon is the only celestial body beyond Earth that has been visited by human beings. Various missions have been sent to Moon till date. The first human-made object to touch Moon’s surface was Soviet Union’s Luna 2 in 1959. However, United States’ NASA Apollo program, of the 1960s and 1970s, is the only program to date to send manned missions. The most recent mission to the Moon was in December 2013, by China’s Chang’e 3.