Moon Express: First private company given permission to fly to the moon

The company’s ship will be a ‘single-stage hod rod of space’, according to its CEO

A full moon is seen in Tundra near the river of Khanemi, located in the Yamal peninsula above the polar circle (REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko)

The first ever private mission to the moon is beginning – and it might be the beginning of our colonisation of space.

The US government has given permission to a private Florida company to send a spaceship out of Earth’s orbit and up to the moon.

The company behind the mission, Moon Express, hopes that it can send up a washing machine-sized rover to the moon that will jump across its surface, firing engines to hop around rather than driving around on its wheels.

"Why crawl when you can fly," said Moon Express CEO Bob Richards. He called the company's planned lunar ship a "single-stage hot rod of space."

Moon Express hopes to send its ship up late next year, flying from New Zealand, carried up by a rocket that it hasn’t yet tested. It hopes eventually to send far more thins up there – making money by cutting resources out of the moon, like platinum, and selling collectibles harvested from its surface.

The company hasn’t technically been given a licence to fly, but a recognition from the government that it would do no harm. And the go ahead is "is a milestone and it is not implausible that they will succeed,” said retired space policy expert John Logsdon of George Washington University.

The first flight will have five customers, one of which is a firm that lets people have their loves ones’ ashes carried up to the moon. Mr Richards’ own parents’ ashes will be on that flight – he said that they used to sing “Fly Me To The Moon” to him and that the mission will fulfil that wish.

But Moon Express hasn’t yet build the lander, which it hopes to show off in September.