Longueuil, Quebec, October 15, 2018 --The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is positioning Canada's space community to maintain its global leadership in space robotics. Accordingly, the CSA announced today that it is investing $1.6 million in two concepts for lunar rovers that would use artificial intelligence to make their own decisions. Canadian businesses MDA, a Maxar company, and Canadensys Aerospace Corporation have each been awarded a contract worth $800 000 to develop an innovative concept for the CSA. The CSA made the announcement at the start of a three-day event to promote Canadian space capabilities to major space companies, including Blue Origin, Airbus Defense and Space and Moon Express. As part of ongoing discussions with the international space community to prepare options for Canada's participation in the next chapter of space exploration, the CSA recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Moon Express, a US-based company.

A Satellite grad who says NASA's history is her history, too. Through their eyes, we view how what happened in space in July 1969 changed life in an iconic part of Florida. On July 20, 1969, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot of the first lunar landing mission, posed for a photograph beside the deployed United States flag during an Apollo 11 moonwalk. The Lunar Module is on the left, and the footprints of the astronauts are clearly visible. Bob Richards remembers watching the gray, ghostly figures bounce across his family's black-and-white TV screen nearly a half-century ago: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first humans walking on the moon.

The Google Lunar XPrize, an ambitious $30 million competition to send a robot to the surface of the moon, will end without any of the teams able to meet the March 31 deadline, organizers said in a statement Tuesday. After consulting with the five teams left in the competition, "we have concluded that no team will make a launch attempt to reach the moon by the March 31st, 2018 deadline," founder Peter Diamandis and chief executive Marcus Shingles wrote in the statement. "This literal'moonshot' is hard, and while we did expect a winner by now, due to the difficulties of fundraising, technical and regulatory challenges, the grand prize of the $30 [million] Google Lunar XPrize will go unclaimed." To win, contestants would have been required to land a spacecraft on the moon's surface, travel at least 500 meters, and then transmit high-definition video and images back to Earth. The end of the competition is a letdown and a sign of the difficulties of commercial space travel, despite the advancements of companies such as SpaceX.

At first glance, it looks like R2D2 haas finally been blasted in space. But in fact, the MX-1E from Moon Express could revolutionise space exploration - and pave the way to mine the moon. The privately owned, Cape Canaveral based Moon Express hopes to take America back to the moon 45 years after NASA's last lunar landing, and this week the rocket that could take it there began its final testing. The initial spacecraft, known as MX-1E,is a similar size and shape to the R2D2 droid from Star Wars, and is slated to fly before next year aboard a Rocket Lab Electron booster, which launches from New Zealand. Ultimately the company plans to establish a lunar outpost in 2020 and set up commercial operations on the Moon, mining material and returning it to Earth to sell.

With no significant atmosphere or particles in the air to scatter sunlight, light on the moon is distributed much differently than it is here on Earth, giving rise to extreme dark patches offset by ultra-bright regions. This phenomenon, coupled with the presence of moon dust, presents a challenge for future lunar rovers and even human exploration, according to NASA. To work around this, scientists have created a'lunar sandbox' that simulates the conditions on the moon, allowing them to develop algorithms that can guide their robots safely around the environment. The Lunar lab is a 12-foot square sandbox in which researchers build the moon's terrain using statistically-generated features based on spacecraft observations. It contains eight tons of the human-made lunar soil simulant JSC-1A.

WASHINGTON – The 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 meters and to transmit a video and photographs back to Earth.

A permanent robotic mining outpost on the moon could be on the cards as early as 2020. The Florida-based company Moon Express has raised over $45 million in funding for three expeditions that will culminate in a mission to mine moon rocks and return them to Earth. Because the laws governing usage of resources in space are vague, a profit-driven mission of this kind could cause international controversy. "It's something that is being discussed internationally now, but there is no agreed-upon answer, and I'm not sure there's going to be," says Henry Hertzfeld at the George Washington University Space Policy Institute in Washington, DC. Moon Express was founded in 2010 with the aim of winning the Google Lunar XPRIZE, a $20 million award for the first privately funded vehicle to land on the moon.

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.

Spaceflight company Moon Express has released its plans to mine the moon with robots and it aims to get started by 2020. The company was founded in 2010 with the aim of winning the Google Lunar Xprize -- a competition to get privately funded spacecraft on the moon. And while it still has its sights on that prize, Moon Express has planned beyond that and has laid out a strategy for establishing its lunar outpost in just a few years. The company's first moon mission, dubbed Lunar Scout, will use Rocket Lab's Electron rocket to send its MX-1E robotic explorer to land on and deliver several payloads -- including the International Lunar Observatory -- to the moon. If completed by the end of this year and before the four other finalists for the Lunar Xprize, this mission could win Moon Express the competition's $20 million prize.

A privately owned company plans to use robotic spacecraft to launch a series of commercial missions to the moon, some 45 years after NASA s last lunar landing, officials said on Wednesday. Cape Canaveral, Florida-based Moon Express is developing a fleet of low-cost robotic spacecraft that can be assembled like Legos to handle increasingly complex missions, founder and Chief Executive Officer Bob Richards said in an interview. Ultimately the company plans to establish a lunar outpost in 2020 and set up commercial operations on the Moon, mining material and returning it to Earth to sell. The initial spacecraft, known as MX-1E,is a similar size and shape to the R2D2 droid from Star Wars, and is slated to fly before the end of the year aboard a Rocket Lab Electron booster, which launches from New Zealand. Google is offering a top prize of $20 million for the first privately funded team to land a spacecraft on the moon; have it fly, drive or hop at least 1,640 feet (500 meters) and relay pictures and video back to Earth.