Space-Exploration Startup Scores U.S. Regulatory Coup

After six years of effort and a roughly $30 million investment, space-exploration startup Moon Express Inc. just became the first commercial venture to get U.S. regulatory authorization for a mission beyond Earth's orbit.

Now the Northern California-based company and internet entrepreneur Naveen Jain, its chairman and co-founder, need a reliable rocket, formal launch license and another cash infusion to turn that historic dream into reality.

Government and Moon Express officials confirmed, as expected, that an interagency group headed by the Federal Aviation Administration has signed off on the company's plan to send a tiny, unmanned scientific spacecraft to the surface of the moon in the second half of 2017.

The decision stops short of approving the actual launch of a 20-pound rover crammed with scientific instruments, specific details of which still await a green light from the FAA.

But the months of deliberations leading to Wednesday's announcement have been closely watched by the burgeoning commercial-space industry, because the result could set an important legal and diplomatic precedent for how U.S. authorities will review and regulate future private missions to the moon, deeper into space and perhaps eventually to Mars.

The principles are likely to apply to nongovernmental spacecraft whose potential purposes will range from mining asteroids to tracking space debris.

Even if the pioneering flight proposed by Moon Express is delayed, scrubbed or fails, the achievement in breaking through what had seemed a bureaucratic logjam may help smooth the way for private space missions envisioned by other companies. Those include Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, which hopes to send a robotic spacecraft to Mars as early as 2018, and already is engaged in similar regulatory discussions with U.S. officials. Mr. Musk, who according to NASA officials may spend as much as $300 million on those initial plans to explore the Red Planet, has indicated he intends to disclose details next month.

In the end, the same approval process also may be applicable to ventures such as in-orbit refueling of satellites, a concept long promoted by companies such as Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp., Orbital ATK Inc., and Space Systems Loral, a unit of Canada's MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd.

The government's decision is "really a symbol of what a small group of entrepreneurs are capable of doing" when it comes to expanding space endeavors, Mr. Jain said in an interview. It underscores that the "best way to commercialize space," and tap the potential of extracting material from the lunar surface, "is through private enterprise."

U.S. officials sought a way to comply with longstanding international treaty obligations calling for nations to supervise all missions outside Earth's orbit. In the past, such missions were all devised and funded by governmental entities, which had clear-cut responsibility to authorize and monitor them.

But under the first-of-its-kind process established for Moon Express, U.S. agencies conducted a detailed payload review that encompassed issues such as ensuring that the company's lander wouldn't damage or pollute the lunar surface.

Ultimately, Moon Express hopes to mine and retrieve minerals, as well as provide a potential platform for producing propellants to power future deep-space missions. Reaching those goals will require a host of engineering and scientific breakthroughs. But Congress set the stage for such ventures last year by protecting corporate property rights.

Wednesday's announcement "really establishes that the legislation now applies to the private sector," said Bob Richards, another company co-founder.

Moon Express also has attracted attention due to the relatively low cost of its MX-1 lander and anticipated launch contract, which Mr. Jain said together are expected to amount to about $10 million. That is a tiny fraction of the many hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to build and send traditional unmanned missions to the moon, other parts of the solar system or further into space.

Apart from the focus on novel technology, Moon Express and its proponents have prompted debate on Capitol Hill about how the U.S. government, in coming decades, can effectively oversee what is projected to be a surge in commercial ventures outside the atmosphere.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration sent draft legislation to Capitol Hill seeking to establish a common regulatory framework for future commercial missions beyond Earth's orbit.

In June, Michael Gold, head of Loral's Washington office and chairman of an FAA advisory panel, told a House transportation subcommittee that swiftly passing such a bill is essential to maintaining U.S. competitiveness in space. Currently, the FAA's commercial space office is "responsible for rockets that go up, and then capsules or other payloads that come down," he said. But there is a big regulatory gap, Mr. Gold asserted, because "everything that occurs in between remains in a literal and legal vacuum."

Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 03, 2016 08:25 ET (12:25 GMT)

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