Washington (AFP) – More than 50 years after the last Apollo mission, the United States will try again to land a spacecraft on the moon on January 25, said the head of what could be the first private company to successfully land on the moon lunar surface.
Issued on: November 30, 2023 – 03:41
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The lander, named Peregrine, will have no one on board. It was developed by American company Astrobotic, whose CEO John Thornton said it would carry NASA instruments to study the lunar environment ahead of NASA’s manned Artemis missions.
A few years ago, NASA decided to commission US companies to send scientific experiments and technology to the moon – a program called CLPS.
These fixed-price contracts are intended to make it possible to develop a lunar economy and provide transportation services at lower costs.
“One of the big challenges of what we’re trying to do here is to attempt a launch and landing on the lunar surface at a fraction of what it would otherwise cost,” Thornton said Wednesday at a news conference at his company’s headquarters in Pittsburgh.
“Only about half of the missions to the lunar surface were successful,” he said.
“So it’s certainly a huge challenge. I will be scared and excited at the same time at every stage.”
The launch is scheduled for December 24th in Florida with the first flight of the ULA industrial group’s new rocket called Vulcan Centaur.
The probe will then take “a few days” to reach lunar orbit, but will have to wait until January 25 before landing so that the lighting conditions at the destination are right, Thornton said.
The descent occurs autonomously, without human intervention, but is monitored from the company’s control center.
Back in the spring, the Japanese start-up ispace tried to be the first private company to land on the moon, but the mission ended in a crash. Israel also suffered a setback in 2019. Only four countries have managed to land on the moon: the USA, Russia, China and most recently India.
In addition to Astrobotic, NASA has signed contracts with other companies such as Firefly Aerospace, Draper and Intuitive Machines.
The latter is scheduled to launch aboard a SpaceX rocket in January.
“NASA leadership recognizes the risks and has accepted that some of these missions may not be successful,” said Chris Culbert, the CLPS program manager.
“But even if not every landing is successful, CLPS has already had an impact on the commercial infrastructure needed to build a lunar economy,” he said.
With its Artemis program, NASA wants to build a base on the lunar surface.
© 2023 AFP