Private Company Given The Okay To Land On The Moon For The First Time Ever

This is actually pretty exciting news.  A U.S. company named Moon Express has become the first private company to be given permission to land on the Moon.  The company is planning to land an unmanned lander called the MX-1E there in 2017.  This was no easy accomplishment for the company, either.  In a statement that was released by the company they said:

"The U.S. Government has made a historic ruling to allow the first private enterprise, Moon Express, permission to travel beyond Earth's orbit and land on the Moon in 2017."

They went on to say that this decision would begin "a new era of ongoing commercial lunar exploration and discovery, unlocking the immense potential of the Moon's valuable resources."

Now, one of the first questions I had about all of this was, "Who did they have to get permission from?"  The other question I had was, "Why do they need permission to do this?  I didn't think that any one country had laid claim to the entire Moon, right?"  So here's the short and sweet in regards to these two questions.  To begin with, there is something out there called the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which says that any non-governmental entity must first get the permission of their government before sending anything up to operate in space, including on the Moon.  The U.S. Government's response to this treaty was to create the Federal Aviation Administrator's (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation.  Yeah, I was surprised to learn that there was a branch of the FAA that dealt with sort of thing, too.

Moon Express started it's endeavor when Google announced their "Lunar XPRIZE."  With the prize of $20 million to first place and $5 million to second place, the rules are fairly simple.  Now, I said the "rules" were fairly simple, not that actually pulling this off was!  The first company that can land an unmanned rover on the Moon and travel 500 meters across the Moon's surface will win.  There are 16 different companies that are competing in this contest, but only two of these companies have been approved for a launch contract.  The second company is the Israeli-based SpaceIL.  The other 14 companies have until December 31, 2016 to obtain a launch contract in order to remain in the competition.

Just because these two companies have been allowed permission to attempt these Moon landings, doesn't necessarily mean that the first one to launch will win.  Plenty of things can go wrong leading up to, and including, the launch. 

Whatever happens, it should be an interesting race!