Extract from ABC News
The first US lunar lander in more than 50 years rocketed towards the Moon on Monday, launching private companies on a space race to make deliveries for NASA and other customers.
Key points:
- If successful, the Peregrine lander will make the first soft landing on the Moon by the United States since the Apollo 17 mission
- The private lander is carrying a piece of rock from Mount Everest and the remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry
- The Vulcan rocket on which it was launched has also made history, replacing the Atlas V in a new phase of space exploration
Astrobotic Technology's Peregrine lander caught a ride on a brand new rocket, Vulcan, which launched from Cape Canaveral early on Monday morning.
Vulcan streaked through the Florida pre-dawn sky, propelling Peregrine on a roundabout route to the Moon that should culminate with an attempted landing on February 23.
Astrobotic aims to be the first private company to successfully land on the Moon, something only four countries have accomplished.
But a Houston company also has a lander ready to fly and could beat it to the lunar surface, taking a more direct path.
"First to launch. First to land is TBD," said Astrobotic chief executive John Thornton.
NASA gave the two companies millions to build and fly their own lunar landers. The space agency wants the privately owned landers to scope out the place before astronauts arrive, while delivering NASA tech and science experiments as well as odds and ends for other customers.
Astrobotic's contract for the Peregrine lander comes to a total of $US108 million ($161 million).
The last time the US launched a moon landing mission was in December 1972, when Apollo 17's Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt became the 11th and 12th men to walk on the Moon.
It was the final Apollo mission, closing out a program that has remained NASA's pinnacle achievement.
The space agency's new Artemis program — named after the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology — looks to return astronauts to the Moon's surface within the next few years.
First will be a lunar fly-around with four astronauts, possibly taking place before the end of the year.
Vulcan rocket to replace Atlas V
The Vulcan rocket on which Peregrine was launched played no less a groundbreaking role in Monday's moonshot from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The 61-metre rocket, built by Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance (ULA) with main engines from Jeff Bezos's space company Blue Origin, is essentially an upgraded version of ULA's hugely successful workhorse Atlas V rocket, which is being phased out of service.
The Soviet Union and the United States racked up a string of successful Moon landings in the 1960s and 70s, before putting lunar touchdowns on pause.
China joined the elite club in 2013, and India followed in 2023. Last year also saw landers from Russia and a private Japanese company slam into the Moon, while an Israeli nonprofit crash-landed in 2019.
Next month, Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket company will provide the lift for the Nova-C lander, built by Houston company Intuitive Machines.
Nova-C's more direct one-week route could see both spacecraft attempting to land within days or even hours of one another.
The hour-long descent to the lunar surface — by far the companies' biggest challenge — will be "exciting, nail-biting, terrifying all at once," Mr Thornton said.
Besides flying experiments for NASA, Astrobotic drummed up its own freight business, packing the 1.9-metre-tall Peregrine lander with everything from a chip of rock from Mount Everest and toy-sized cars from Mexico that will catapult to the lunar surface and cruise around, to the ashes and DNA of deceased space enthusiasts, including Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke.
The Native American Navajo nation recently sought to have the launch delayed because of the human remains, saying it would be a "profound desecration" of a celestial body revered by Native Americans.
Mr Thornton said the December objections had come too late, but promised to try to find "a good path forward" with the Navajo for future missions.
One of the spaceflight memorial companies that bought room on the lander, Celestis, said in a statement that no single culture or religion owns the Moon and should not be able to veto a mission.
More remains are on the rocket's upper stage, which, once free of the lander, will indefinitely circle the sun as far out as Mars.
Cargo fares for Peregrine ranged from a few hundred dollars to $US1.2 million per kilogram, not nearly enough for Astrobotic to break even.
But for this first flight, that's not the point, according to Mr Thornton.
"A lot of people's dreams and hopes are riding on this," he said.
AP/ABC
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