Crowdfunded Moon mission is serious about science
Celebrity-backed lander aims to drill the lunar south pole within a decade.
Elizabeth Gibney
19 November 2014
With government budgets for space exploration under strain, a UK consortium has embarked on a project to raise money for a robotic Moon mission by offering the public the chance to stash their memories and even a hair sample on the Moon.
The aim of Lunar Mission One is to put a lander on the Moon's south pole within the next decade. The robotic probe would to drill 20–100 metres into the surface, seeking insights about the origins of the Earth and the Moon, and paving the way for establishing a lunar base.
To fund the US$1-billion enterprise, parent company Lunar Missions plans to turn the borehole into a time capsule and personal repository for paying customers. Its backers started soliciting contributions on 19 November, and had collected almost £90,000 (about $140,000) within the first 12 hours from its launch.
...Sceptics doubt that there is enough interest to raise that much cash. But David Iron, who founded Lunar Missions and works on financing space projects at the consulting firm CGI, believes there is no harm in finding out.
... Lunar Mission One has gathered support from a range of UK partners, including RAL Space, part of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council, based near Oxford; University College London; and the Open University in Milton Keynes. The high-profile announcement also comes with the endorsement of dozens of UK scientists — including TV celebrity Brian Cox of the University of Manchester — and of two former UK science ministers, Ian Taylor and David Willetts. Iron says that he hopes to involve international partners later.
“This looks like something real, if they can raise the money,” says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He contrasts the clout of science expertise in the line-up, which includes Ian Crawford, planetary scientist at Birkbeck University of London and the ESA Rosetta mission's Monica Grady, with most of the teams competing for the Google Lunar XPRIZE, whose aims are "light on the science side" ...
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More info at http://www.lunarmissionone.com/