Almost six decades after the Soviet Union managed to soft-land its Luna 9 probe on the Moon on February 3, 1966, placing a device on our satellite remains a risky undertaking. India, which landed its Vikram module on the moon last year, becoming the fourth country to do so, had already failed in an earlier attempt in 2019. The same year, the Israeli company SpaceIL also crashed while trying to become the first country to achieve its private project, a milestone that the Japanese from Ispace also failed to achieve in 2023. Against this backdrop, the Peregrino 1 mission launches today, the first attempt at a commercial robotic flight to the Moon as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. The mission, led by the Pittsburgh company Astrobiotics, is part of the plan to return to the moon as part of the Artemis program, in which the United States, Europe, Japan and other countries are working together to establish lunar colonies at the end of this decade. and prepare to attack Mars within 20 years.
“They are explorers who are going to the moon before us,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. If the landing is successful, it would be the first US landing on the moon since 1972.
The Peregrino 1, which is almost two meters high and two and a half meters wide and has a capacity of 120 kilograms, will depart from Cape Canaveral in Florida (USA) at 8:18 a.m. Spanish time. On board the United Launch Alliance's new rocket, the Vulcan Centaur. It will be a mission with two new features that make the project more uncertain: many groundbreaking features of the rocket and also the first flight for the Blue Engine 4 engines from Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' company. If all goes well, the journey to the Moon will take several weeks until February 23rd, when an attempt will be made to land in the Sinus Viscositatis (Bay of Viscosity) region, an area so named in 2022 and about millions of years ago of years the moon flowed. wash.
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The lander carries 20 payloads, including five NASA instruments. The space agency, which was placed in the hands of this private initiative in 2019, wants to carry out measurements of the lunar atmosphere, the composition of the soil regolith or the radioactive environment to which the astronauts will be exposed. In addition to these tools, there are objects from seven countries. This includes more scientific material, such as a radiation detector from the German Aerospace Center, but also more symbolic things, such as a time capsule with messages from 80,000 children from all over the world, as well as DNA samples and ashes from 70 people sent by the DLR American Space funeral home Elysium Space. These examples include those of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke and three US presidents: George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.
The cargo from the Vulcan Peregrino 1 mission in an image from United Launch Alliance.ULA
Importantly, the Pilgrim-1 mission will be the first step in a new model of travel to the Moon that can make the satellite more accessible to scientists and potentially provide a more efficient way for NASA to begin lunar colonization. Success or failure, this mission will be the first of ten CLPS planned in the near future, and Astrobiotic CEO John Thornton has already warned that a setback will not stop it. With a budget slightly larger than that of previous projects such as India's Chandrayaan-3 or Israel's Beresheet, the Astrobiotic mission is estimated to cost around $100 million, less than half the cost of the film Avatar.
The last time US astronauts were on the lunar surface was in 1972. Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said this mission was “a major step forward in our Artemis lunar exploration plans.” “Our scientific and technological research is being conducted on the lunar surface, which will support the sending of the first woman and next man to the Moon. “Investing in these commercial landing services is also another major step in building a commercial economy in space beyond low Earth orbit,” he added.
Another private company, Intuitive Machines (of Houston), plans to launch a lander that flies on a SpaceX rocket in mid-February. But first the focus will be on Japan, which will attempt to land on the moon on January 19th. The Japanese space agency's lander, which consists of two small rovers, was launched in September along with a space telescope. If successful, Japan will become the fifth country to soft land on the moon, after the Soviet Union, the United States, India and China, which has landed three times in the last decade and plans to collect samples again at the end of this year. And just last summer, India did it.
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