California aerospace company Moon Express has just become the first private company to be granted permission to attempt its own Moon landing. This marks an important step in the commercialization of space exploration, which has become a growing trend in recent years thanks to companies like Elon Musks Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

According to the Outer Space Treaty (which sounds a lot cooler than it is, aside from laws against Moon-based death rays), non-governmental space missions must still be authorized and overseen by one of the countries who are part of the treaty, which in this case is the United States. The permission granted to Moon Express is primarily related to this rule.

Moon Express’ mission will not be manned, but it could prove the viability of future Moon missions conducted by private firms. The company hopes to eventually be able to mine the Moon for resources that are hard to come by on Earth, and company CEO Bob Richards said that there is already a regulatory system in place that would allow for this.

“The great news was there is a regulatory process in the works,” Richards said in a recent interview with The Verge. “The bad news is we had zero confidence that the regulatory framework would be ready in time for our mission in 2017. Ironically you had a great ‘space resources’ act that says you can own what you get, but we’re in a situation where you can’t launch to go get it.”

Moon Express is also competing for Google’s Lunar X Prize, which offers a $30 million reward for the first team to successfully “land a privately funded rover on the moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit back high definition video and images.” Winning the prize would obviously be a huge bonus for Moon Express, but the company notes that its mission is bigger than the competition.

“Even though we are a proud contender [in the X Prize competition], it’s neither a cornerstone of creating the business nor do we need to win it,” Richards said. “But we want to win it.”

Photo by Jacopo Marcovaldi