The Moonspike project made its debut last week. The project aims to build a low cost two-stage rocket and a spacecraft to send a “tiny” payload to the Moon. The group is led by Chris Larmour, who has run several technology companies, and Kristian von Bengtson, who is well-known as a co-founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals, an organization developing a rocket for carrying a single person on a suborbital space trip. While Copenhagen Suborbitals is a volunteer, non-profit, the Moonspike project is organized as the private company Moonspike, Ltd.

The goal is to impact this 1 gram “Lunar Penetrator” into the Moon’s surface:

 The spike is titanium and the disk will hold a flash memory chip with digital photos and messages from backers of the project.

Moonspike has opened a crowd-funding campaign to raise over $909k and as of today has gotten nearly $80k pledged with 26 days left: Moonspike: the World’s First Crowdfunded Moon Rocket by Moonspike Limited — Kickstarter.

You can download their feasibility report (pdf).

Here is a video laying out their plan: