Moon Express

Moon Express is a commercial space exploration company founded in 2010 and headquartered at the Moon Express Space Campus in Cape Canaveral, Florida — a facility built on the historic Launch Complexes 17 and 18, adjacent to NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The company's stated mission is to expand Earth's economic and social sphere to the Moon by developing scalable, low-cost robotic spacecraft capable of reaching the lunar surface and beyond, in order to unlock the Moon's resources, including water ice and other minerals, for scientific research and commercial benefit.

Moon Express rose to prominence as a leading competitor in the Google Lunar X Prize, a competition to land a privately funded robotic spacecraft on the Moon. In July 2016 it became the first private company to receive U.S. government authorization, under the Outer Space Treaty, to send a commercial spacecraft beyond Earth orbit to the Moon. The company signed a multi-launch contract with Rocket Lab and was later selected by NASA in November 2018 as one of nine companies eligible to bid on the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program for delivering NASA payloads to the lunar surface.

The company's product line centers on its MX family of modular, scalable robotic explorers, based on a common spacecraft bus architecture derived from NASA's Modular Common Spacecraft Bus. Flagship vehicles include the MX-1 Scout Class Explorer, the dual-stage MX-2 capable of reaching deep-space targets, and the nine-engine MX-9 Frontier Class Explorer designed for heavier payloads and lunar sample-return missions. Planned expeditions have historically included a maiden mission to the lunar equator, a South Pole outpost at a 'Peak of Eternal Light,' and a sample-return mission to bring lunar material back to Earth for research and commercial use.

Moon Express continues to maintain an active web presence highlighting its MX-1/MX-2/MX-9 explorer lineup and its NASA CLPS partnership.