UK Goes to Kickstarter ‘to Lead Moon Landing’, Requires £500M

Lunar Mission One is a UK-led consortium that has plans to land a robotic probe on our Moon, within 10 years.

The team has taken to Kickstarter, where they are attempting to raise £500 million to get to the Moon, providing donors with photos, text and their DNA included in a time capture that will be buried on the Moon. Lunar Mission One has a mission of reaching the Moon’s south pole, seeing if it’s possible to set up a human base for the future. Plenty of well-known scientists and organisations have endorsed the mission, such as Prof Brian Cox, the Astronomer Royal Lord Rees, and Prof Monica Grady of the Open University.

David Iron, the Lead on Lunar Mission One said he wanted to set up the initiative because governments are finding it much harder to look into space missions. He continued “Anyone in the world will be able to get involved for as little as just a few pounds. Lunar Mission One will make a huge contribution to our understanding of the origins of our planet and the Moon.”

The initial phase of the mission will cost £600,000, but over the next 4 years the team will continue to collect funds from the public through contributions and what not. People can buy digital storage space on the lander for their own personal pictures, music, videos or messages. Paying a little more will allow the general public to have a strand of their hair on the lander, which could last one billion years according to the Lunar Mission One team.

Source: BBC.