A private enterprise hopes to launch the first American moon-lander in over four decades within the next two years.
NASA has been hard at work in the decades since the Apollo missions first landed men on the moon in the late 60s and early 70s. The Curiosity rover found water on Mars in September of this year, and in August the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced its intentions to study Europa for potential life and habitability using a similar rover. Despite cutbacks and other budgetary concerns, NASA has continued to explore space and expand human knowledge of planets beyond our own.
Since the Apollo 17 left the moon in 1972, however, no US entity has returned to the Earth’s natural satellite. A private company by the name of Moon Express hopes to soon change that by making the first US soft-landing on the moon in 2015 with a new lunar lander dubbed the MX-1.
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