Crowdfunded moon mission seeks origins of life

LONDON — Mankind may have already accomplished the giant leap of walking on the moon, but a group of scientists and entrepreneurs is hoping to boldly go where no one has gone before.

In possibly the most ambitious crowdfunded project ever attempted, a British team is planning to use public donations to pay for a lunar landing.

Within 10 years, the team believes it can raise enough money to design, build and launch a spacecraft capable of travelling to the moon and drilling deep into its surface in an attempt to understand the origins of life on Earth.

The team wants to bury a time capsule containing digital details and DNA of those who have donated money to the venture alongside an archive of the history of Earth. Finally, the mission will assess the practicality of a permanent manned base at the lunar south pole.

Lunar Mission One has the backing of eminent space scientists at universities throughout Britain as well as Ian Taylor, a former Conservative science minister, Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, and the U.K. parliamentary space committee.

The team must raise $1 million to get the project started and it will take a further $5.2 billion to get it off the ground. It is the brainchild of David Iron, a former Royal Navy engineering officer and financial consultant who has worked on more than 150 technology and space projects, including Britain’s military satellite navigation program, Skynet.

By 2017, the team is hoping to have finalized launch dates and have a total mission cost. The following year it will begin designing the spacecraft. By 2021, the craft is to be built and testing carried out throughout 2022 and 2023 ahead of an expected launch date in 2024.