posted 01-21-2015 07:07 PM               

Please use this topic to discuss Moon Express and its MX family of commercial lunar spacecraft, a fleet of robotic explorers capable of delivering scientific and commercial payloads to the moon.

posted 01-21-2015 07:11 PM               

Moon Express will set up launch and landing pads for short, low hops of test vehicles that it hopes to advance rapidly from one version to the next.

"We expect a vehicle to be flying every couple of months," said [Moon Express co-founder and CEO Bob] Richards.

The complex will house four stands for tests of new engines and thrusters being developed for the spacecraft, which will be equipped with 25 total. A moonscape may be built similar to the one near Kennedy Space Center's shuttle runway, where the company began performing its early tests.

posted 07-12-2016 10:35 AM               

Moon Express has reached what it says is a long-term agreement with the Air Force’s 45th Space Wing to use complexes 17 and 18 to assemble and test its washing machine-sized lander, which is a contender to win the $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE.

"The moon is rising again over the Space Coast," said CEO and co-founder Bob Richards, who on Tuesday will address the National Space Club Florida Committee in Cape Canaveral.

The landers will perform short, low-altitude hops during tests at the former Cape launch complexes, but flights to the moon could launch from as far away as New Zealand initially, depending on which rocket the company uses.

posted 08-03-2016 01:15 PM               

The U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, signed into law in 2015, provides for the following:

A United States citizen engaged in commercial recovery of an asteroid resource or a space resource under this chapter shall be entitled to any asteroid resource or space resource obtained, including to possess, own, transport, use, and sell the asteroid resource or space resource obtained in accordance with applicable law, including the international obligations of the United States.

posted 01-13-2017 12:21 PM               

The new investment, which the company calls a Series B-1 round, comes from a mix of new and existing investors. The company's investors include venture capital firms Founders Fund and Social Capital, as well as software company Autodesk. Several individual investors also participated in the latest round.

Moon Express Chief Executive Bob Richards said one of the company's co-founders, billionaire Naveen Jain, played a key role in the round. "He not only participated at a significant financial level, but also gave other investors the confidence through his commitment that they should invest as well," Richards said in an interview. He did not disclose how much of the $20 million round he contributed.

The new round brings the total Moon Express has raised to $45 million. Richards said the company is looking to raise an additional $10 million as a "contingency" and to support future missions. "This is not a stunt," he said. "We're not putting all our eggs in one basket."

posted 11-30-2017 12:09 PM               

In January, the company said that it was targeting a date in late 2017 to send its lander to the moon. But that has been pushed back until 2018.

"It's definitely going to be next year, we are in the final stretches of it. And as you can imagine it's rocket science," Jain told CNBC in a TV interview from the Slush technology conference in Helsinki, Finland.

"We are really looking good and we are still hoping to launch the lander next year. And when we launch and land on the moon, not only (do) we become the first company to do so, we actually symbolically become the fourth superpower. And imagine the entrepreneurs doing things that only the three superpowers have done before."