Moon Express 'lunar outpost' looks gorgeous, but don't get too excited yet

While NASA stays diligently focused on its marathon to Mars, it seems everyone else in space exploration wants to sprint to the moon. Between Vice President Mike Pence taking aim at the moon in a speech last week, SpaceX's plans to carry two rich people into lunar orbit in 2018, and the Google Lunar XPrize--a literal moon race for private companies--our lonely satellite is becoming the center of attention lately. Moon Express is one of the companies hoping to take home the $20 million Lunar XPrize for being the first commercial company to land on the moon, travel 500 meters, and send images back to Earth. Today, it released plans for building a robotic outpost on the moon and returning a sample of moon dust to Earth by 2020. "Outpost" is a bit of a strong word here.