Billionaires Are Mining The Moon For Trillions Of Dollars Worth Of Gold And Platinum

Billionaires just got a go signal to mine the Moon for trillions of dollars worth of gold and platinum.

The Sun reported that billionaire Naveen Jain, co-founder of Moon Express and former Microsoft employee, was given the permission to mine the Moon in search for gold, platinum and other minerals worth trillions of pounds.

Moon Express announced on Tuesday that the company has been given $20 billion by wealthy donors to dig the Earth's satellite. A small robotic spacecraft will be sent by the space exploration company to find water, Helium-3, gold, platinum and other valuable rare Earth metals on the Moon's surface.

"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," he told CNBC.

Partnering with NASA's engineering team, the company also aims to help researchers form human space colonies for future generations.

"This year is a watershed year for Moon Express and America's commercial space industry," Moon Express' co-founder, president and CEO Bob Richards said. "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."

NASA has already given Moon Express licenses to space launch complexes 17 and 18 at Cape Canaveral from the U.S. Air Force. The company, which has been running for six years, now has a team of 30 people with contracts for payroll from commercial and scientific agencies.

Plans of sending the international lunar observatory to the Moon and retroreflector arrays to test principles of general relativity theory and lunar geology have been made, as well as the delivery of human remains and DNA samples for space burial from Celestis.