There's been a lot of talk about innovative food and grocery delivery services in the last few weeks, with the market for such services seemingly expanding here on Earth. But what about the market for something like that in outer space? A private space exploration startup called Moon Express based in Cape Canaveral, Florida holds the answer to this question.
The company was established 7 years ago and was a recipient of the Google Lunar X Prize which is a contest that offers a $20 million prize for the "first private venture to get to the moon with a robotic lander by the end of 2017".
Regardless of if Moon Express completes the project in time to win or not, it has caught the attention of big space players such as NASA and Blue Origin.
"We have a lot to do in a very short timeframe, and Rocket Lab has a lot to do in a very short timeframe," said CEO of Moon Express Bob Richards. Rocket Lab is the New Zealand based American company that will be the intermediary between the spacecraft's initiation and the two-stage electron launch vehicle.
The contraption that will make the actual trip to the moon is called the MX-1E lander, and stands about 3 feet wide and 4½ feet tall. Moon Express aspires for the machine to be completed by the end of the summer before sending it to Rocket Lab.
If the mission is successful, Moon Express could open a host of different avenues for moon mining and pay loading. For one, the MX-1E lander could be used to dig up ice, which can serve as a source of water for future human settlements as well as air and rocket propellant. Ice at the bottom of the craters may contain molecules from the time the solar system was born, which could be extracted and inspected by scientists. "It can get basically anywhere in the inner solar system," Dr. Richards said.
Furthermore, the past has shown that moon rocks from Apollo missions are extremely coveted by the U.S., as NASA has never sold them to private collectors.This notion is further manifested in the fact that stolen rocks' value have been set at $50,800 per gram as per retrieval costs.
It is therefore no surprise that Moon Express is the only one interested in being the first to exploit such a market.
A company called Astrobotic Technology Inc. has also planned to deliver payloads to the moon, seeking out investors and raising $2.5 million in their latest seed round. The company is also competing in the Google Lunar XPrize competition, and has locked down 10 deals from "governments, companies, universities, nonprofits and individuals for their first mission to the moon."
What's unique about Astrobotic is the fact that they're attempting to add a ridesharing model to their project so other space companies can collectively send and receive payloads to the galactic realm. This idea has caught the attention of two others in Google's competition including Chile's AngelicvM and Japan's HAKUTO that have now partnered with Astrobotic and will be concentrated on the landing and roving side of things.
The 'going rate' for Astrobotic, it seems, is $1.2 million per kilogram.
While it is clear that an endeavor of such magnitude comes at no meager cost, the question that remains is, who will win in this race to space?
- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/12/science/moon-express-landers.html
- https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jul/13/moon-express-race-against-time-spacewatch
- https://www.sciencealert.com/moon-express-is-on-track-to-start-harvesting-the-moon-by-2020
- https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/11/the-race-to-the-moon-is-underway-as-astrobotic-raises-2-5-million/
