MoonDust to retrieve USD 10 billion of lunar soil in robotic Moon mission
StartupRealities No 83 MoonDust is a space technology and memorabilia company which plans to launch a single uncrewed mission to the surface of the Moon to bring moon dust back to Earth in 2023. The company is taking pre-orders in a crowdfunding campaign and plans to retrieve one tonne of moon material with a retail price of USD 10 billion. STATISTICS Limited amounts of lunar samples (moon soil / moon rock) have ever been brought back to Earth. NASA has 382 kg of moon material brought back in the Apollo 11 to Apollo 17 missions (1969-1972) but none of this is for sale. The former Soviet Union has less than a kilogram, collected with robotic probes in missions in 1970-1976. PRICE NASA estimated in 2003 that its cost of retrieval of the lunar samples was USD 50,800 per gram (in 1973 dollars), which would equal USD 308,000 per gram in 2020 dollars. According to a 2018 article in The Washington Post, 0.2 grams of Soviet lunar soil were sold at auction in 1993 at a price of US...