Moon Express demonstrates Mini-Radar System under NASA’s Innovative Lunar Demonstration Data (ILDD) Program, successfully reaching an important milestone in its commercial lunar data contract.

Mountain View, CA (August 24, 2011) – Moon Express, a Google Lunar X PRIZE contender, announced today that it has successfully demonstrated a critical component of its lunar landing technology to NASA under its Innovative Lunar Demonstration Data (ILDD) Program contract. The Moon Express Mini-Radar System promises to radically reduce the cost and mass of the company’s commercial lunar landing system. NASA has reviewed and accepted the Moon Express Mini-Radar data package, satisfying the requirements of the $500K First Task Order under the company’s $10M commercial lunar data contract.

Silicon Valley-based Moon Express was one of only three U.S. companies awarded the first Task Order under NASA’s ILDD program. Under the task order, NASA agreed to purchase data resulting from the successful test and demonstration of the company’s state-of-the-art Mini-Radar sensor, a critical component of its lunar lander system.

Radar provides autonomous landing spacecraft with crucial ranging information to the surface and has been one of the most challenging and high risk elements of all lander systems. Radar systems have also been historically very expensive in terms of dollars, mass and energy. As part of its risk reduction engineering activities, Moon Express initiated a program to continue the development, test and space qualification of an innovative, low cost, low mass, low energy radar concept invented by Stellar Exploration that showed great promise through progressive developments under NASA Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) programs. The Moon Express investment significantly advanced the radar technology toward spaceflight readiness.

The testing and space validation of the Mini-Radar involved multiple units subjected to a series of laboratory and field testing. These included multiple dynamic tests on the Lunar Lander Test Vehicle, developed in partnership with NASA, and long range tests on the Zeppelin ëEureka’, owned and operated by Airship Ventures, which took the Mini-Radar on flight tests down the California coast and at the Oshkosh Airshow. Additional environmental testing in thermal-vacuum and vibration chambers proved the ruggedness of the Mini-Radar design for spaceflight.

About Moon Express

Selected by Forbes as one of the ’15 Names You Should Know’, Moon Express (MoonEx) is a privately funded lunar transportation and data services company based at the NASA Ames Research Park in Silicon Valley. The company plans to send a series of robotic spacecraft to the Moon for ongoing exploration and commercial development focused on benefits to Earth and has signed a partnership agreement with NASA for development of a lunar lander system.

Moon Express was founded in 2010 by Dr. Robert (Bob) Richards, a founder of International Space University, who serves as CEO; Naveen Jain, a philanthropist, entrepreneur and technology pioneer who founded Intelius and InfoSpace and serves as chairman; and Dr. Barney Pell, Chief Architect for Bing Local Search at Microsoft and former NASA manager, who serves as Vice Chairman and Chief Technology Officer. The Moon Express founders also work together as Trustees of Singularity University. Moon Express has been selected by NASA for a lunar data services contract worth up to $10M. It is also one of only three U.S. companies to receive the first $500K delivery order under NASA’s Innovative Lunar Demonstrations Data (ILDD) program.

Moon Express is also a leading contender in the $30M Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP) competition, which challenges privately funded teams to place a robot on the Moon’s surface that transmits high definition video, images and data back to Earth from the landing site and from 500 meters away. The GLXP is available until 2015.

The Moon Express founders believe in the long term economic potential of the Moon to produce resources essential to humanity’s future on Earth and in space.

For more information, please visit: www.moonexpress.com

Media Contact:
Daven Maharaj
650-646-5356
media@moonexpress.com