How to watch Vulcan Centaur launch for the first time on its historic lunar delivery mission

Astrobotic’s Peregrine is preparing for a lunar landing, hoping to become the first commercial lunar lander to touch down on the dusty celestial body and pave the way for other private companies to follow suit.

Lunar lander will ride on board United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur, is scheduled to take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:18 a.m. ET on Monday, January 8.This historic launch will take place in NASA TVthis NASA app, as well as the space agency’s website, or you can listen via the feed below. The live broadcast is scheduled to begin at 1:30 a.m. Eastern Time.

As part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program and its Artemis program, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander is filled with Government and privately owned payloads Includes many scientific instruments belonging to the space agency. Payloads aboard NASA’s Peregrine include Laser retroreflector array (LRA), which uses laser beams to precisely measure the distance between the Moon and Earth, Linear energy transfer spectrometer (LETS), which measures radiation on the lunar surface to ensure the safety of astronauts on future missions.

The upcoming mission is designed to aid NASA in its quest to return humans to the moon and make the moon a sustainable place for long-term human presence. It also ushered in a new era in which private companies can more easily access deep space destinations, providing government and commercial customers with the means to deliver payloads to the moon. Other payloads include a swarm of tiny robots from Mexico, a time capsule from Carnegie Mellon University containing images, poetry, musical compositions, and the cremated ashes and DNA of loved ones from two space memorial companies.

Peregrine is scheduled to land on the moon in late February, but landing on the moon will not be easy. So far, only NASA, Russia and China have successfully landed on the moon. Other countries’ attempts have not had good results. Beresheet in Israel crashed In April 2019, India’s Vikram spacecraft landed on the lunar surface Did the same thing September 2023. In April 2023, Japan’s ispace also hoped to become the first private company to land on the moon, but its Hakuto-R lander crashed on the lunar surface.

The lander’s goal is to soft-land on the Moon’s Gruithuisen Domes, a group of volcanic rock formations in the Sinus Viscositatis region.

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