Moon Express will launch to Moon in 2018, regardless of X-Prize deadline
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Capitalism in space: The head of Moon Express said yesterday that the company will definitely fly its privately-built lunar rover to the Moon in 2018, regardless of whether that flight occurs in time to win the Google Lunar X-Prize.
The company is competing for the Google Lunar XPRIZE which has a $20 million reward for the first private firm to put a spacecraft on the moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit high definition video and images back to earth. The deadline for doing this is March 2018.
Jain did not give an exact date for the launch and said that getting the prize isn’t necessarily the main priority.
It appears to me that the main reason they will not make the deadline is because Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket won’t be ready in time. This is why its second test launch in the coming weeks is so important. If successful, it increases the chances that Moon Express will be able to meet the X-Prize deadline.
Please consider donating to Behind the Black, by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar to the right or below. Your support will allow me to continue covering science and culture as I have for the past twenty years, independent and free from any outside influence.
Capitalism in space: The head of Moon Express said yesterday that the company will definitely fly its privately-built lunar rover to the Moon in 2018, regardless of whether that flight occurs in time to win the Google Lunar X-Prize.
The company is competing for the Google Lunar XPRIZE which has a $20 million reward for the first private firm to put a spacecraft on the moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit high definition video and images back to earth. The deadline for doing this is March 2018.
Jain did not give an exact date for the launch and said that getting the prize isn’t necessarily the main priority.
It appears to me that the main reason they will not make the deadline is because Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket won’t be ready in time. This is why its second test launch in the coming weeks is so important. If successful, it increases the chances that Moon Express will be able to meet the X-Prize deadline.
I’m positively surprised to learn that your favorite space agency, Rob, :-) will launch a Lunar rover already in a couple of months, March 2018. The orbiter seems to have a solid set of instruments. Radar, 3D-mapping, and spectrometers to measure elemental abundance and of course water. The lander will have a seismometer (the Apollo ones were shut down! in 1977) but might not survive more than a Lunar day and seismologists like long time series. And being from India, it will of course study levitation…
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2017/1129-indias-chandrayaan-2-mission.html
The Planetary Society’s monthly space policy review is of high quality, although I haven’t heard this episode yet:
http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2017/space-policy-edition-19.html