Moon-mining company wins funding to start extracting natural resources from the lunar surface

A company has been awarded £37 million in funding to build a lunar lander that will harvest the moon for its natural resources .
Florida-based Moon Express is competing to win the Google Lunar XPrize, which awards £25 million to anyone who can land a rover on the moon. In order to scoop the prize, the rover has to travel 500m on the surface and transmit back pictures to Earth.



Moon Express is one of sixteen private enterprises that have entered the Lunar XPRIZE competition.

It has already made headlines by claiming it will offer holidays to the moon by 2026 .
But before then, it hopes to bring back "precious resources, metals and moon rocks" from the surface.



“Our goal is to expand Earth’s social and economic sphere to the Moon, our largely unexplored eighth continent," Moon Express co-founder and CEO Bob Richards said in a statement to Florida Today .

 Richards said his company will "enable a new era of low cost lunar exploration and development for students, scientists, space agencies and commercial interests.”

Last year, Moon Express became the only private company to be granted permission (under US law) to leave Earth and land on the moon. It was given the go-ahead by the US Federal Aviation Administration in August in a move that could open up the space race to new levels.
The company, which was founded in 2010, says it is looking to raise another $10 million (£8 million) that will act as a "contingency" for future missions.



It is expected to launch its lunar rover from a site in New Zealand later this year.