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Article snippet: CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — From Launch Complex 17 here at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, many of NASA’s robotic planetary missions blasted off. Soon, the two massive towers that once cradled Delta 2 rockets will be torn down. A new tenant — Moon Express, a tiny company with far-out ambitions — is moving in. Next year, the company, with just 30 employees, aims to be the first private entity to put a small robotic lander on the moon and perhaps win $20 million in the Google Lunar X Prize competition. It is investing at least $1.85 million to renovate decades-old buildings here. The company is transforming a parking lot into a miniature moonscape, and will also set up an engineering laboratory, a mission operations room and a test stand for spacecraft engine firings. Moon Express would not need all of these facilities if its only goal were to win the Lunar X Prize. Its second spacecraft aims to land in 2019 near the moon’s south pole. A third, larger spacecraft in 2020 is to gather samples and then bring them back to Earth, the first haul of moon rocks since a Soviet robotic probe’s return in 1976. But these plans almost came to a halt a couple of years ago — not because of technological challenges or financial shortfalls, but because of an international agreement known as the Outer Space Treaty, which is marking its 50th anniversary this year. The treaty spells out what countries are and are not allowed to do in space. Its crowning achievement was stopping the n... Link to the full article to read more