Details

Last Funding Type

Series Unknown

Last Funding Money Raised

$12.50M

Industries

Aerospace,National Security,Space Travel

Founded date

Aug 1, 2010

Number Of Employee

1 - 10

Operating Status

Active

Moon Express is a privately financed commercial space company blazing a trail to the Moon. Their prime directive is to open up the Moon’s vast resources for humanity and establish new avenues for commercial space activities beyond Earth orbit. They begin with profitable on-ramps by disrupting space transportation with innovative, flexible, and scalable new spacecraft that will radically reduce the cost of commercial robotic space activities. In doing so they will extend the economic sphere of Earth and make the resources of the Moon and asteroids accessible.

They have a team of driven, visionary people merging the best practices of traditional aerospace know-how with the innovation and entrepreneurial culture of Silicon Valley. They have partnerships with NASA as both collaborators and customers. They have signed a contract with NASA for lunar cargo delivery, and NASA has selected Moon Express as a partner in developing lunar landers to put the U.S. back on the surface of the Moon.

The company was founded by Dr. Bob Richards, Naveen Jain, and Dr. Barney Pell in August 2010 and was quickly selected by NASA for its $30M Innovative Lunar Demonstrations Data (ILDD) program. Moon Express entered and became the recognized leader in the $30M Google Lunar XPRIZE competition in October of that same year, and in 2014 was selected by NASA for its Lunar CATALYST program focused on a U.S. return to the Moon. Moon Express is headquartered at the NASA Ames Research Park in Mountain View, California, with facilities and operations in Huntsville, Alberta, and at the Kenneday Space Center and Cape Canaveral, Florida.