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Moon Express
An artist's conception shows Moon Express' lunar lander.
One of the competitors in the race to send the first private-sector probe to the moon says it's acquired the assets of a rival team, marking what could be considered a "Netscape moment" for the commercial moonshot industry.
Moon Express said the acquisition of Colorado-based Next Giant Leap will add to its momentum in the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize competition, which promises a huge payoff to the first team that sends a rover to the moon for an exploratory trek that includes transmitting high-definition imagery back to Earth. Moon Express and Next Giant Leap are among 26 teams vying for the prize.
"There are many synergies between our companies," Bob Richards, Moon Express' co-founder and CEO, said in today's announcement, which was issued during a Google Lunar X Prize team summit in Washington. "We are all stronger together, and we look forward to carrying on the innovation and vision of the Next Giant Leap founders and partners."
Both ventures were selected by NASA in 2010 for data-sharing contracts that are worth up to $10 million each. Both companies have been working on rovers that would hop across the lunar surface. The Next Giant Leap effort produced a "hopper" design that attracted a $1 million commitment from the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory to fund the development of a guidance, navigation and control system testbed.
Richards told me that the relationship with Draper Lab on the control system "is perhaps the most obvious and strongest inheritance of the acquisition we will be actively working," but he also placed great value on the other partnerships that Next Giant Leap had forged over the past few years. Among those partners are Sierra Nevada Corp., MIT Space Systems Laboratory, Aurora Flight Services, Jolted Media Group, the Center for Space Entrepreneurship and the Challenger Center for Space Science Education.
Richards said that the acquisition involved a payment to Next Giant Leap, but by mutual agreement, the amount would not be disclosed. Moon Express probably ranks among the more financially solid ventures chasing the Google Lunar X Prize, considering that one of the venture's co-founders is dot-com billionaire Naveen Jain.
Next Giant Leap
An artist's conception shows Next Giant Leap's proposed lunar lander. Moon Express' Bob Richards said that his venture "will subsume Next Giant Leap designs to the extent possible and practical. ... The main hardware difference is that the Moon Express lander uses the NASA Common Spacecraft Bus heritage and the Next Giant Leap lander was based on the SNC Orbcomm bus."
Michael Joyce, founder and president of Next Giant Leap, said the acquisition serves as validation of his team's value, and as a testament to the dedication of his partners. "Next Giant Leap and its partners have made remarkable technical progress," he said in today's announcement. "We are proud to be able to offer that value in support of the vision and resources of Moon Express that continue our dreams toward the moon."
Richards said Joyce and another Next Giant Leap co-founder, Todd Mosher, have been invited to serve as advisers to Moon Express.
The Google Lunar X Prize is offering $20 million to the first team that lands a rover on the moon, sends it on an excursion of at least 500 meters and gets it to send high-definition images and video back to Earth. If a second team pulls off the same feat, that team would receive $5 million. Another $5 million is reserved for bonus prizes. The prizes expire if no team fulfills the requirements by the end of 2015, and if a government-backed lander beats the teams to the lunar surface, the grand prize would be reduced to $15 million.
Richards and Jain have said Moon Express intends to launch its lunar lander as early as 2014.
More about the Google Lunar X Prize:
- Moon Express tests lunar telescope on Earth
- Rocketeers will obey NASA's rules for lunar missions
- SpaceX sells its first ticket for moon launch
- Gallery: The teams that are shooting for the moon
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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We've really come far in the last few decades ....
In the reduction of the size of computer chips and electronic devices , advanced robotics , lighter weight materials , integrated computer engineering design , engine or thrust efficiency , ect. ....
I hope that this new momentum in the interest of all type of space works , continue ....
Thanks Alan ....
Indeed a great article by Alan. Definitely an exciting time, and I hope things will continue to get smaller and lighter and launch costs will correspondingly get cheaper. Now's the time to bang those swords into plowshares and make the best use we can of our technology in space. We need a good infusion of cash, however, from visionaries with lots of $$ like Elon Musk. Hopefully people like Warren Buffett, who is visionary and wise enough to realize the potential of buying a major railroad, will get onboard and lend further support, investment, stimulus, and incentive to spur on the development at a more rapid pace.
$20 million is a lot of money, but what will an outfit spend to win it? The real prize is to position oneself in the marketplace for future services. Soon we will be working and playing on the moon and fortunes will be made (and lost). Exciting stuff! Thanks for another interesting article.
Thanks, Alan, for a great article as usual. czeke, I just wanted to follow up on your comment, as I was wondering the same thing myself... $20M is a nice chunk of change, and I am definitely a proponent of the Xprize, but I think the $20M will be merely a nice honorarium prize (with outstanding publicity by the way), and will not be at all compensating for the development and launch costs. While I completely appreciate the generosity of Mr. Ansari and all who are making the prize available, I also wish someone with big $$ (i.e. of Warren Buffett or Bill Gates net worth calibre) would sweeten the pot a bit to provide some really huge incentive not only for this particular lunar rover competition, but big huge prizes that would be a nice compensating monetary offset for developing and successfully achieving even bigger and better achievements and goals.
One other quick question for Alan - I probably didn't read carefully enough, but re: the NGL lander in the artist conception illustration... I guess that's a proposed production model/prototype that is unrelated to the Ansari X Prize (which requires a rover)? What is the purpose of their lander? Seems like it would be limited in its utility with no capacity for mobility; a bit of a throw-back to the lander Conrad and Bean harvested pieces from during Apollo 12. Would be great if Moon Express could get some rovers on the lunar surface that could robotically or via remote control begin some initial bulldozing, drilling etc functions to initiate some of the groundwork for radiation bunkers/shelters that could be followed up a few decades later by astronauts building a rudimentary base.
Another economic bubble is forming....the ground floor IS right here!!
Luna is still my priority for human exploration, if we could set up sustainable habitat there it would prove we could survive elsewhere in space with a closer link to earth.
Agreed, Ernie. Would be nice not to have all of our eggs in one basket in terms of survival of the species, and the moon is obviously the most feasible economically and in terms of proximity to Earth and travel time. Need to get some pretty hefty radiation shielding by burrowing in underground or covering up structures with lunar rock etc., though (see my comment above about perhaps doing this robotically before astronauts arrive).
buzz...if you were to land a rover in lunar polar region and find a good supply of water it does make a good radiation shield!
Ernie - you're right, I hadn't thought about that. I wonder how thick of a water "shell" one would need (maybe inject the water into an outer chamber built into a Bigelow-type inflatable module) for long-term shielding to prevent DNA damage? I guess if it's inside a polar crater, such a shield might stay shaded and would be essentially an "igloo" covering a habitation module.
Current best guess is 15 meters / 50 feet - a LOT of mass to try to move around!
Just wondering where people take money to become billionaires? Naveen Jain, from what I have read, is the founder of Intelius, but I would not say that it is a large company that make tons of money. Although they were involved in one scam () but I cannot believe making fools of people like that allows you to become a billionaire.
Love to see the steps forward in space exploration, but cannot help but think that all these companies will eventually merge into one big corporation, aka "The Company" in Alien, and will control all space commerce.
Keep 'em coming, Alan.
Are Paramount, Columbia, Disney, Sony Pictures, FOX Studios, you know, the Hollywood players in the moon landing -- are they among the 26 companies vying for this contract?
<it's just a parody, peepul. srsly>
Yes, they are going to fake another Moon landing at their Martian sound-stage, near Olympus Mons. It's a great place to fake Moon landings, because you don't have to make as many gravity adjustments.