Florida startup sets sights on moon

Bold, long-term exploration plan

WASHINGTON, July 30, (Agencies): Florida startup Moon Express is setting its sights high: ambitiously shooting to become the first private company to launch a small, unmanned craft to the moon before the year’s out.

A big success could pave the way for scheduled flights to deliver scientific and exploration equipment, to exploit lunar soil resources and commercial potential.

In a recent interview with AFP, CEO and co-founder Robert Richards acknowledged that it is a “very optimistic date given that the rocket has yet to achieve orbit and given we are still building our vehicle.”

The race to try this first flight on a tight deadline was motivated at least in part by the $20 million offered by the Google Lunar X-prize in 2007.

The condition: be a private entity and launch a craft to the moon’s surface by Dec 31, 2017.

Another condition will be, once on the moon, to move the ship or a robot on board, over 500 yards (meters), and to transmit a video and photographs back to Earth.

For now, Cape Canaveral, Floridabased Moon Express is one of five finalists in this contest on the 33 in the running — and the one most tipped to win. The four others are Japanese team Hakuto, Israel’s SpaceIL, Indian Team Indus and Synergy Moon, an international collaboration spanning more than 15 countries.

“We would love to win the prize, (it would be) the icing on the cake,” Richards said.

He said the company was not about

tion.”

One hundred metres below the Mafuta, “the butcher” slowly trawls the seabed at a rate of one kilometre an hour.

A pipe carries the sediment to the boat where it is sifted, cleaned and returned to the sea. Only possible diamond deposits, identified by X-ray, are taken deeper into the rush, so much as the goal.

“Our company is about building an enterprise, a visionary enterprise to bridge first to the moon in an economic way that collapses the cost of getting there and develops brand new markets.

And with a long term plan of prospecting and harvesting and ultimately utilizing the resources on the moon... beginning with water,” stressed Richards, a Canadian.

Water is the essential main ingredient for man to be able to explore the solar system, he said. Necessary for man — but also to fuel his journey.

Single

Shaped like a soda can with feet to land, it is made of a single stage, and its engine allows it to fly from the Earth’s orbit to the moon.

It will take five to six days between launch and moon landing, according to Richards.

In fact, he said, MX1-E is the first module of an exploration system, much like a “Lego” block that is assembled further to get larger vehicles capable of carrying heavier loads.

The other vessels are MX2, MX5 and MX9, the numbers corresponding to the number of modules.

In part due to its compact size, MX1-E can be launched by the new Electron rocket manufactured for $5 million by American startup Rocket Lab. It launches from facilities in New Zealand. There are still three test flights before the launch of MX1-E, of the four planned.

“They are a little behind but they are doing very well... It is currently scheduled

the boat for processing. (AFP)

Climate-resilient roads sought:

Heavy traffic snakes through downtown Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, manoeuvring along the potholed roads as impatient motorists hoot at one other, while pedestrians in December,” said Richards, who plans three missions to the moon by 2020.

Also: WAPAKONETA, Ohio:

Ohio police say a rare gold replica of the lunar space module has been stolen from the Armstrong Air and Space Museum.

Police in Wapakoneta (wah-puhkuh-NEHT’-uh) responded to a museum alarm late Friday night and discovered the 5-inch (12.7-centimeter) high, solid-gold replica had been stolen.

Replicas of the lunar excursion module produced by Cartier were presented to Neil Armstrong and his two fellow astronauts, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, in Paris shortly after their historic space mission. Armstrong, a Wapakoneta native, became the first person to step onto the moon’s surface in 1969.

PARIS:

Surprised astronomers have found stars of three different ages in a stellar “nursery” in the Milky Way, throwing into question the scientific consensus on how stars are formed.

The European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile spotted three distinct groups of baby stars in the Orion nebula — the closest star “factory” to Earth, a team reported.

“Looking at the data for the first time was one of those ‘Wow!’ moments that happen only once or twice in an astronomer’s lifetime,” ESO astronomer Giacomo Beccari said in a statement.

try to cross the congested streets, weaving through slow-moving cars.

The city’s asphalt road network is in dire straits, and will only get worse as damage from flooding and freak weather increases due to the impact of climate change.

The solution - say engineers, city planners and campaigners - is concrete roads.

The city council has already decided to replace high-maintenance asphalt with concrete, but there is no clear timeframe or budget.

“It’s a project that we want to see take off as soon as possible,” said Michael Chideme, spokesman for Harare City Council. “We view these (concrete) roads as strong roads - roads that are resilient in terms of the vagaries of weather, so once we have these roads, they will not be susceptible to being washed away by storms.”

Some other African countries have already embraced concrete roads, shifting away from asphalt - including Malawi, Ethiopia and South Africa.

Chideme said all roads around Harare would be rebuilt using concrete, starting with the Arcturus Road, a main artery that connects the capital to Mashonaland East Province.

“Research studies that have been done already by our team of quantity surveyors and civil engineers show that well-designed cement roads require little or no maintenance that lasts a 40-year lifespan,” Chideme told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. (RTRS)