Government OK's Moon Express Mission to the Moon


Source:  By Randy Showstack, Earth & Space News EoS (AGU).

Excerpt: The U.S. Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) announced on 3 August that on 20 July it had approved the first commercial space payload intended to land on the Moon. The agency granted a “favorable payload determination” for Moon Express, a privately funded commercial space company based in Moffett Field, Calif., to launch its coffee-table-sized robotic MX-1E spacecraft. The approval “is a landmark decision by the U.S. government and a pathfinder for private sector commercial missions beyond the Earth’s orbit.” said company cofounder and CEO Bob Richards. “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.” ...In 2014, NASA partnered with Moon Express and two other U.S. companies to advance lander capabilities to enable payload delivery to the surface of the Moon. In 2015, the company lauded U.S. president Barack Obama’s signing into law the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act. The act includes a section referred to as the Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act of 2015 that facilitates commercial exploration for and commercial recovery of space resources.

https://eos.org/articles/government-oks-moon-express-mission-moon

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