Moon Express, Inc., a Google Lunar X PRIZE team and commercial space company, has become the first corporate sponsor of Uwingu’s IndieGoGo crowd-sourcing campaign.

Moon Express, Inc., a provider of commercial and scientific missions to the Moon and leading contender in the $30M Google Lunar X PRIZE competition, has become the first corporate sponsor of Uwingu LLC’s crowd-sourcing campaign to generate funds to launch its first products.

“I can’t begin to say how proud we are to have the Silicon Valley space company Moon Express as our first corporate sponsor. Moon Express is becoming known for showing leadership in the commercial space field, and this sponsorship is more evidence of that leadership. Moon Express is also showing it really cares about the lunar science community by helping Uwingu get started so it can support lunar and other kinds of space science” said Dr. Alan Stern, Uwingu’s CEO.

”Moon Express is all about entrepreneurial efforts leading a new era of space exploration,” said company co-Founder & CEO Bob Richards. “We applaud Uwingu’s initiative to create private sector resources supporting space exploration, research, and education and are proud to be Uwingu’s first corporate sponsor.”

Uwingu is a space-themed, for profit start up seeking crowd-sourced funding to launch an ongoing series of public engagement projects. Uwingu’s mission is to use proceeds from those projects to generate funding for space exploration, research, and education efforts around the world. Uwingu’s crowd funding agent is IndieGoGo, a leader in the field.

Uwingu (which means “sky” in Swahili, and is pronounced “oo-wing-oo) consists of astronomers, planetary scientists, former space program executives, and educators. Included in the company’s portfolio of space heavyweights are space historian and author Andrew Chaikin, space educator Dr. Emily CoBabe-Ammann, citizen science leader Dr. Pamela Gay, author and museum science director Dr. David Grinspoon, planet hunter Dr. Geoff Marcy, planetary scientist and aerospace executive Dr. Teresa Segura, planetary scientist and former NASA science boss Dr. Alan Stern, and planetary scientist and CEO of the Planetary Science Institute, Dr. Mark Sykes.

Uwingu will employ novel software applications to “game-ify “space, with up to half of the proceeds going toward space research and education.

Uwingu’s crowd-sourcing campaign launched two weeks ago and has just over 4 more weeks to go.

For more information, contact Dr. Alan Stern at stern@uwingu.com, Dr. Emily CoBabe at ecobabe@uwingu.com, or Dr. Pamela Gay at starstryder@gmail.com. Dr. Stern may also be reached by phone at 303.324.5269. Follow Uwingu on Twitter at UwinguSky; and friend Uwingu on Facebook.