Billionaires get go-ahead to mine the MOON for trillions of pounds worth of gold and platinum
Naveen Jain – whose company collapsed during the dot-com bubble – will lead a bid to send spacecraft to check out the moon by the end of this year
A BILLIONAIRE and his pals are one step closer to mining the moon for gold, platinum and rare materials worth trillions.
Moon Express on Tuesday announced it was handed £16 million ($20billion) from wealthy donors to start carving up our planet's satellite.
The space exploration company will send a small robotic spacecraft there this year as part of a competition to win funding from Google.
Naveen Jain, Moon Express' billionaire co-founder and former Microsoft employee hopes to find water, Helium-3, gold, platinum and rare earth metals on the surface.
"Moon Express now has all the capital it needs to land its small robotic spacecraft on the surface of the moon in November or December of 2017," Jain told .
After scoping out the surface of the moon, the company will look for more funding to begin mining the moon's natural resources.
It's working with Nasa's engineering team and is considered the front-runner when it comes to commercially making the most of the moon.
The US government granted the company gave it the green light to embark on a commercial lunar mission - the first of its kind - last year.
But it is only with a cumulative total of £36billion in private funding that the mission got its legs.
It has been backed by Trump's notorious donor Peter Thiel and engineering software makers Autodesk.
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Space mining is about to become a huge industry - and naysayers fear it's a regulatory Wild West.
The likes of Titanic director James Cameron has even put his money behind it.
Nasa will soon explore asteroid 16 Psyche - which experts claim is so valuable it could crash the world’s economy.
The space rock has been valued at an eye-watering £8,000 quadrillion.
Priceless planets and asteroids are top target for the richest entrepreneurs on Earth but not just for their precious metals.
Water, dubbed the petrol of the solar system, will also be in high demand.
The chemical is crucial for rockets, and finding a way to source it while mid-flight will be invaluable for space flight.
Private companies are working out how to mine water from planets and asteroids so that they can be used like cosmic fuel stations when space travel becomes commercial.
Entrepreneurs who mark their territory now will be set to rake it in when spacecraft make pit stops on their land.
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