A British space venture is giving ordinary citizens the chance to leave their mark on the moon in a decade's time while helping scientists scout a possible location for a permanent base there.
Lunar Mission One launched a crowdfunding drive on Wednesday to cover its start-up costs. By mid-morning organisers had raised around GBP 74,000 (approximately Rs. 71.8 lakhs) pounds, according to the Kickstarter website, towards an initial target of 600,000 pounds (approximately Rs. 5.82 crores) they aim to reach within a month.
More than 750 people signed up within hours, with funders asked to pledge at least GBP 60 (approximately Rs. 5,800) for a digital memory box in which their messages, pictures, videos and - via a strand of hair - DNA will be carried into space and then buried in a capsule on earth's nearest neighbour. Organisers will need several orders of magnitude more to recoup the total estimated project costs of GBP 500 million (approximately Rs. 4,854 crores), the bulk of which they hope to raise by the same method.
"Governments are finding it increasingly difficult to fund space exploration that is solely for the advancement of human knowledge and understanding as opposed to commercial return,"
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