Moon Express is the first American company to receive permission from US authorities for a private lunar landing. It was founded in 2010, and among its founders is Indian-born businessman Naveen Jain. According to TechCrunch, the company's total attracted investment amounted to $45 million.
The company participated in the Google Lunar Xprize competition with a $30 million prize fund: the winner was to launch a research vehicle to the Moon by March 31, 2018. Moon Express reached the finals, but the competition was ultimately cancelled—two months before the deadline, no team was ready to complete the task.
Neighbor on the Island
According to Artemyev, Jain turned out to be his neighbor on Mosquito Island in the British Virgin Islands. "Next door is Larry Page's island, and Richard Branson's island is there too—so it's interesting. It's fun. Interesting people gather there," the entrepreneur said. Jain learned that Artemyev was interested in space and persuaded him to invest in Moon Express. Together with him, Artemyev invested $5 million, and the Euroset co-founder estimates the total investment in the company at several tens of millions of dollars.
"A Real Business"
Artemyev described his view of lunar mining as follows: "And this is a real business in the sense that on the Moon you don't have to dig for anything. The entire cosmic periodic table falls there. So you take, gather all the regolith, grind it up—gold in one direction, diamonds in the other. Secondly, the Moon is a source of rocket fuel. That is, water is split into hydrogen and oxygen using solar panels. Storing it in the conditions of absolute cosmic minus is cheap, unlike on Earth."
At the same time, according to him, after the cancellation of Google's lunar landing competition, the company currently has no concrete plans: for that, a landing contract needs to be signed "with anyone, theoretically it could be with Roscosmos."
1
