The countdown to launch has begun. United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket was delivered to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station ahead of an early morning launch on Monday, a mission that could end with the first fully private spacecraft landing on the moon.
Vulcan’s primary payload is Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander. If all goes according to plan, Peregrine will embark on a roughly 1.5-month journey to the moon before attempting to land on the lunar surface on February 23. The companies originally planned to launch on Christmas Eve, but ULA decided to postpone due to ground system issues.
That’s how we roll. #ToryTimelapse #vulcanrocket pic.twitter.com/3bz9LgMZ0r
— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) January 5, 2024
“If you’ve been paying attention to the lunar industry, you know that landing on the lunar surface is extremely difficult,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said in a press release last month. “That being said, our team continues to exceed expectations and demonstrates incredible ingenuity during flight reviews, spacecraft testing and major hardware integration. We are ready for launch and landing.”
ULA and Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic weren’t the only companies to shine at Monday’s launch. It will also be the first time that Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine takes off on Vulcan’s first-stage booster (after years of delays), and the first mission as part of NASA’s plan to launch payload delivery to the lunar surface.
The program, called Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars in total to spur private development of lunar landers. To accomplish this mission, Astrobotic received a $79.5 million grant from NASA in 2019.
The mission is scheduled to take off at 2:18 a.m. Eastern time on Monday. NASA will livestream the mission on its YouTube channel.
The launch will be the first of many to the moon this year. Other lunar launches planned for 2024 include the Intuitive Machines IM-1 lander, scheduled to lift off a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in February; Japanese company ispace’s second lunar mission (their first lander landed on crashed into the lunar surface not long ago); Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander will be launched in the third quarter of 2024. (Both the Intuitive Machines and Firefly missions are part of the CLPS project.)
With such a lineup, 2024 is likely to be the first time a private company has landed a spacecraft on the moon, and the first time a U.S. entity has landed on the lunar surface since 1972.
Astrobotic will attempt to land Peregrine near a region on the moon called the Gruithuisen Domes, and will deliver some NASA payloads and scientific instruments to better understand the lunar environment. Peregrine will also carry about 15 non-NASA payloads, including Carnegie Mellon University’s rover and a Mexican space agency robotics program called Coleman.
3 Comments
Pingback: United Launch Alliance and Astrobotic are ready to blast off to the moon early Monday – Tech Empire Solutions
Pingback: United Launch Alliance and Astrobotic are ready to blast off to the moon early Monday – Paxton Willson
Pingback: United Launch Alliance and Astrobotic are ready to blast off to the moon early Monday – Mary Ashley