Moon Express unveils lunar lander design with planned 2015 launch date

Moon Express, currently a contender for Google’s $30 million Lunar Xprize, recently unveiled designs for the robotic spacecraft that could let them continue lunar exploration in the next decade. Dubbed the MX-1, company CEO Bob Richards is calling the coffee table-sized craft the “‘iPhone of space’; a platform capable of supporting many apps including our core plan of exploring the Moon for resources of benefit to humanity.”

A U.S. company is taking what it hopes to be a small step toward eventually mining the moon. Moon Express, based in Mountain View, Calif., just unveiled the design for a small robot spacecraft about the size of a coffee table that it says could move about the moon’s surface powered only by solar panels and hydrogen peroxide.