Moon Express Sets Its Sights on Deliveries to the Moon and Beyond<br />Julie Arnold, a spokeswoman for Moon Express, said the lander would be a little bigger than the R2-D2 robot from the movie “Star Wars.”<br />The design change was made so that the lander would fit in a smaller rocket that Moon Express now plans to use for the first mission.<br />“I think it’s big,” Dr. Richards said of the potential market, adding that he hoped its designs would “redefine the possible.”<br />The company released illustrations of its MX-1E lander, which it says will make the trip to the moon this year.<br />But even if the company does not win the prize, he said, Moon Express would still<br />have a profitable future ferrying payloads for NASA and commercial customers.<br />“What we’ve designed is a common core approach.”<br />Moon Express’s second mission would use a larger spacecraft that looks like two soda cans, one stacked on top of the other, essentially two MX-1Es.<br />“It can get basically anywhere in the inner solar system,” Dr. Richards said, meaning the neighborhood from the sun to Mars.
