Moon Express

Moon Express's robotic spacecraft is designed to operate in missions that go beyond Earth. The company was founded by Barney Pell, Bob Richards, and Naveen Jain in 2010, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States.

The company has a primary focus on reaching the moon to open new avenues for commercial space activities beyond Earth. They look to discover what resources are available on the moon and offer expedition and payload partners on their commercial missions. They are developing their MX explorer systems specifically for charter and customer-owned missions. The company was the first company to receive approval from the United States government to send a robotic spacecraft to the moon.

The company has a range of spacecraft known as the MX family of explorers. Moon Express' spacecraft supports multiple applications. Their range includes the MX-1 Scout Class Explorer, the MX-2 Scout Class Explorer, and the MX-9 Frontier Class Explorer. They have three maiden expeditions planned to go to the moon to introduce a commercial space transportation system. Expedition One is called Lunar Scout and will be the first commercial voyage to the moon. Expedition Two is named Lunar Outpost and is meant to allow for lunar South Pole exploration. Expedition Three is Harvest Moon and is meant to take place in 2020. This phase is meant to bring lunar samples back to Earth.

The company believes that the moon is Earth's eighth continent and has estimated roughly 10,000,000 gallons of water per crater on the moon and that it would take 220,000,000 years to deplete 1% of the resources on the moon's surface.