When all the discussion nowadays centre around Mars and the mission related to it and when everybody talks about landing on the Mars and understanding it, it comes as a surprise that someone is planning to go to moon. Yes our very own dear Moon- our natural satellite. Moon has already been conquered by the US, Chinese and USSR federal space agencies. And now a private company called Moon Express wants to hoist its flag on the lunar surface. It just became the first ever private organisation ever to get approval from the US federal government to land a spacecraft on the Moon. If all goes well, then next year we all may be watching the news of Moon Express conquering the Moon.
The company has been founded by billionaire entrepreneur Naveen Jain, computer scientist Barney Pell and space futurist Bob Richards. If it finally succeeds in achieving what it has set out to do, the company will only be the fourth entity to scale these new summits of success and honour after US, China and USSR. The company is on cloud nine currently but this permission which has been granted to it has started a new debate. This has made things difficult for the regulatory bodies which are in charge of handing out such permissions.
This is to note that the Moon Express has been granted a one-time exception to launch a commercial space mission beyond Earth. But the big question is what if someone else comes up with a similar request? At present there are no pre-set laws or regulations. May be this was the major reason that not only the Moon Express got permission to land its spacecraft on Moon but also ended up getting legal approval to mine and profit off Moon minerals.
It wasn’t until April this year that the US State Department, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), among other bodies, were actually ready to receive Moon Express’s application to explore beyond Earth’s orbit, and approval has now been granted. The permission has taken care of only one fact that the US can guarantee that any future mission won’t violate the international ‘Outer Space Treaty’.
This has put a restriction on the Moon Express that it would be entirely transparent with the government about its movements to and on the Moon and it won’t interfere with other space missions, space crafts or artefacts. Wow! Money does make the world go round and it surely does make you go up the Moon!
Author: Technology Vista
