WASHINGTON – LunaCorp, the Arlington, Virginia company that wants to make space-related travel a national pastime, just got a shot in the arm -- cash for a privately-financed moon landing in 2003.

LunaCorp President David Gump wouldn’t provide details before the company’s June 15 announcement, but said the amount of money is "substantial" and comes from a well-known firm.

"It’s a Fortune 500 company that’s a real household name," Gump said, declining to elaborate.

Press reports have named Disney as being interested in investing in LunaCorp so that it could develop an attraction at its theme park allowing park visitors to experience the moon mission in a type of virtual-reality game.

It will operate off solar panels when it is traveling in sunlit areas and batteries when it is in shadow. It will also carry a drill that will be able to penetrate about 4 feet (1.2 meters) into the lunar soil to search for water vapor in the samples.

For those down on Earth, the rover will be equipped with an imaging system to see and film everything around it. Video of the rover's search will be broadcast to Earth.

The existence of ice would be a boon for future lunar exploration, since its chemical elements -- hydrogen and oxygen -- could be processed into drinking water and air for humans or fuel for spacecraft and surface equipment.

Scientists believe that any ice on the moon probably came from comets. In sunlit areas, the water from comets would be cooked immediately, vaporizing into space. But the perpetually dark craters at the moon’s poles just might trap water molecules in a deep freeze.

Data from NASA's Lunar Prospector spacecraft, an orbiter that was launched in January 1998, showed strong evidence of ice at the lunar poles.

After gathering global mapping data for nearly 19 months, the probe ended its mission in July 1999 with a controlled crash into a lunar crater. Scientists hoped the crash would send chunks of ice high enough above the moon that they could be seen by powerful telescopes on Earth, but no such effect occurred.

LunaCorp’s Gump has said the mission would be budgeted at $80 million — with NASA providing $22 million under its Discovery exploration program. The rest would come from private investors, including entertainment companies.

Gump declined to name an amount for this latest windfall but said, "we still need to get additional sponsors in the coalition to make the project happen."

"This has always struck me as a very aggressive program," said Hu Davis, an aerospace consultant and an advocate of human spaceflight. "It’s a positive thing if there is funding behind these missions because the technology already exists."