Moon Express, the first private company in history to receive government permission to travel beyond Earth's orbit, announced Tuesday that it raised another $20 million in private equity financing to fund its maiden lunar mission to take place in late 2017. This brings the total amount of private investment to $45 million from investors that include Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Collaborative Fund and Autodesk. What may have added impetus to investor interest in Moon Express is President Trump's picks for the NASA transition team — Charles Miller and Chris Shank — and the leading candidate to become the next NASA administrator, GOP Rep. Jim Bridenstine. All support commercial space ventures and manned exploration — including lunar missions.

If successful, the new MX-1 lunar lander from Moon Express would not only win the $20 million Google Lunar XPRIZE, it would also help jump-start a new era of space exploration. Up until now, only government-funded missions from the United States, China and Russia have landed on the moon. Last year the U.S. government made a historic ruling to allow the company to engage in peaceful commercial lunar exploration and discovery following consultations with the FAA, White House, State Department and NASA. The company's challenge now is to meet the XPRIZE requirement: Make a soft landing on the moon, travel 500 meters across its surface, and transmit high-definition video and images back to Earth. All tasks must be done before the end of this year. According to co-founder and chairman Naveen Jain, "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." The company's goal is twofold: 1) mine the moon for valuable resources, such as Helium-3, gold, platinum group metals, rare earth metals and water; and 2) help researchers develop human space colonies for future generations.

Just before the presidential election, NASA released a call for concepts for payloads to the moon to be delivered by private companies. That shows a rising tide of interest in the moon by our nation's space industry. Bob Richards co-founder, president and CEO of Moon Express

Moon Express has contracted five electron rockets from New Zealand-based launch provider Rocket Lab for its missions. In the future, it plans to be rocket agnostic and use a variety of rocket providers. European Space Agency has also expressed interest in partnering with Moon Express. ESA has plans to develop lunar colonies in the future.