The launch countdown is on. United Launch AllianceNASA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket was transported to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station before launch early Monday morning, a mission that could end with the first fully private spacecraft landing on the moon’s surface.
The basic payload of the Vulcan is Astrobotic Peregrine lunar landing. If all goes as planned, Peregrine will embark on a journey to the Moon over the course of about a month and a half, before attempting to land on the surface on February 23. The two companies were targeting a launch on Christmas Eve, but ULA decided to postpone it. Due to problems in the ground system.
This is how you roll. #ToryTimelapse #Vulcan missile pic.twitter.com/3bz9LgMZ0r
– Tory Bruno (@torybruno) January 5, 2024
“If you follow the lunar industry, you realize that landing on the moon is very difficult,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said in a press release last month. “However, our team has consistently exceeded expectations and demonstrated incredible ingenuity during flight reviews, spacecraft testing, and major hardware integrations. We are ready for launch and landing.”
ULA and Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic aren’t the only companies enjoying a lot of interest at Monday’s launch. This will also be the first time Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engines have flown aboard a Vulcan spacecraft’s first stage booster (after years of delays), and the first mission as part of NASA’s program to begin delivering payload to the lunar surface.
This program, the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, has distributed hundreds of millions collectively to stimulate private development of lunar landers. For this mission, Astrobotic received $79.5 million from NASA in 2019.
The mission is scheduled to launch at 2:18 a.m. EDT on Monday. NASA will broadcast the mission live on its YouTube channel.
The launch will be the first of many missions to the Moon this year. Other lunar launches scheduled for 2024 include the Intuitive Machines IM-1 lander, which is scheduled to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 in February; Japan’s ispace’s second lunar mission (the first lunar lander crashed shortly before landing); and Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander in Q3 2024. (The Intuitive Machines and Firefly missions are part of the CLPS program.)
With such a lineup, it is very likely that 2024 will be the year in which a private company lands a spacecraft on the moon for the first time, and the first time an American entity ascends to the surface of the moon since 1972.
Astrobotic will attempt to land Peregrine near an area of the Moon known as the Gruithuisen Domes, and will deliver a handful of NASA payloads and scientific instruments that will seek to better understand the lunar environment. Peregrine will also deliver about 15 non-NASA payloads, including a rover from Carnegie Mellon University and a robotic project called Coleman from the Mexican Space Agency.