The Implications of Private Companies' Lunar Exploration on Science

Private companies are set to launch a series of commercial missions to the Moon this year, marking the start of a new era in lunar exploration. The goal is to kick off a series of trips to the Moon, made faster and cheaper by industry. A dozen or more Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) missions might launch in the next decade, carrying scientific and other payloads to different lunar regions. However, many are still moving forward, and the latest wave of Moon landers emerged from the ashes of a privately funded competition, the Google Lunar X Prize, which ran between 2007 and 2018 and aimed to give US$20 million to the first company to land and operate a spacecraft on the Moon.