CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — While China and India landed on the moon, Russia, Japan and Israel threw themselves into the lunar dump.
More than fifty years after the end of the Apollo program, two private companies are now scrambling to get the United States back into the game.
It’s part of a NASA-backed effort to launch commercial lunar deliveries as the space agency focuses on getting astronauts back there.
“They are the scouts who will go to the moon before us,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology is first in line with the launch of a planned lander on Monday aboard United Launch Alliance’s brand-new rocket called Vulcan. Houston’s Intuitive Machines aims to launch a lander with a flight with SpaceX in mid-February.
There is also Japan, which will try to land in two weeks. The Japanese Space Agency’s lander, with two toy-sized rovers, had a big advantage, sharing the September launch with an X-ray telescope remaining in orbit around Earth.
If successful, Japan will become the fifth country to set foot on the Moon. Russia and the United States did this repeatedly in the 1960s and 70s. China has landed three times in the last decade, including on the far side of the moon, and will return to the far side later this year to return samples from the moon. And just last summer India did just that. The only country to send astronauts to the moon is the USA.
Landing without destruction is no easy task. There is almost no atmosphere to slow down the spacecraft, and parachutes are clearly useless. This means the lander must descend using thrusters while passing through treacherous cliffs and craters.
ispace, a Japanese millionaire’s company, saw its lander crash into the moon last April, followed by a Russian crash landing in August. India achieved victory in the southern polar region a few days later; This was the country’s second attempt after the crash in 2019. An Israeli non-profit also crashed into the moon in 2019.
The United States has not attempted a moon landing since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, the last of 12 moonwalkers, discovered the gray, dusty surface in December 1972. The end of the USA and the Soviet Union has come. The US followed up with a lunar satellite or two, but so far no controlled lander.
Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are not only ending America’s moon landing drought, they’re also vying for bragging rights as the first private entity to land — gently — on the moon.
Despite launching later, Intuitive Machines have a faster, more direct shot and should land within a week of liftoff. It will take Astrobotic two weeks to reach the moon and another month in lunar orbit before attempting a landing on February 23.
If there are rocket delays that hold up both missions, both companies can get there first.
“It’s going to be a wild, crazy ride,” promised John Thornton, Astrobotic’s general manager.
His counterpart at Intuitive Machines, Steve Altemus, said the space race is “more about geopolitics, where China is going, where the rest of the world is going.” “Of course we want to be first,” he said.
The two companies have been neck and neck since receiving nearly $80 million in 2019 under a NASA program to develop lunar delivery services. Fourteen companies are currently under contract with NASA.
Astrobotic’s four-legged, 6-foot-tall (1.9 meters high) Peregrine lander, named after the fastest bird, the falcon, will carry 20 research packages to the moon for seven countries, five for NASA and one the size of a shoebox. Itinerant for Carnegie Mellon University. Peregrine will target the mid-latitude Sinus Viscositatis, or the Bay of Stickiness, named for the long-formed silica magma that forms the nearby Gruithuisen Domes.
Intuitive Machines’ six-legged, 14-foot-tall (4 meters high) lander Nova-C will target the moon’s south polar region and also carry five experiments for NASA that will last about two weeks. The company is targeting 80 degrees south latitude for landing. Altemus noted that this would be quite close to Antarctica on Earth, 10 degrees closer to the pole than India reached last summer.
Scientists believe the permanently shadowed craters of the south pole contain billions of pounds (kilograms) of frozen water that could be used for drinking and making rocket fuel. That’s why the first moonwalkers in NASA’s Artemis program (named after the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology) will land there. NASA still has a 2025 deadline for this launch, but the General Accountability Office suspects it will be closer to 2027.
Astrobotic will head to the south pole on its second flight, carrying NASA’s water-seeking Viper rover. And Intuitive Machines will return there on its second mission, conducting an ice exercise for NASA.
Landing near the Moon’s south pole is particularly risky.
“The south pole and the mountainous region are so rocky, steep and full of craters that it is very difficult to find a lighted area where you can land safely,” Altemus said. to just the right place.”
While Houston has long been associated with the space, Pittsburgh is a newcomer. Astrobotic’s lander will carry a Kennywood amusement park token to commemorate the Steel City, the winner of the public vote to defeat the Steelers’ Terrible Towel waved at football games, dirt from Moon Township’s Moon Park, and a Heinz pickleball pin.
The vehicle also carries the ashes or DNA of 70 people, including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. Another 265 people will be represented in the upper part of the rocket, which will orbit the sun after separation from the lander. These include strands of hair from three original “Star Trek” actors as well as three U.S. presidents: George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Education Media Group. AP is solely responsible for all content.