Moon Express plans to mine the moon

Next year NASA lunar initiative, a Californian aerospace company, Moon Express, co-founded by Indian-American billionaire Naveen Jain,

aims to send the first commercial robotic spacecraft to the moon. Moon Express is the first company to successfully test a prototype lunar lander.
The lander’s first mission is a one-way trip to land softly on the moon.

Jain,  said the moon holds precious metals and rare minerals that can be brought back to help address Earth’s

energy, health and resource challenges. Born on  6 September 1959, became a business executive and entrepreneur, is  the founder and former of CEO of Infospace, founder

and CEO of inome (originally called Intelius), and founder and Chairman of Moon Express. Jain grew up in villages throughout Uttar Pradesh, as well as in New Delhi.

Later he moved to Roorkee, where in 1979 he earned an engineering degree from the Indian Insitute of  Technology Roorkee, and then moved to Jamshedpur, where in 1982

he earned his MBA at  XLRI School of Business and Human Resources. In 1999, Jain was awarded the Emerging Entrepreneur Award Winner for the Pacific Northwest Region

by Ernst & Young.

When Infospace stock was at its heights during the dot-com boom, Jain briefly became a billionaire, appearing on Forbes’ list of the “400 Richest Americans” for 2000.

‘We went to the moon 50 years ago, yet today we have more computing power with our iPhones than the computers that sent men into space,’ Jain was quoted as saying.

‘That type of exponential technological growth is allowing things to happen that was never possible before.’