Private US company Astrobotic plans to land on the Moon on January 25, more than 50 years after the last Apollo mission. The company’s CEO, John Thornton, announced that the lander, named Peregrine, will carry NASA instruments to study the lunar environment in anticipation of NASA’s Artemis manned missions.
The launch is scheduled for December 24 from Florida aboard the inaugural flight of the new rocket from the ULA industrial group, named Vulcan Centaur. The probe will then take “a few days” to reach lunar orbit, but will have to wait until January 25 before attempting landing, so that light conditions at the target location are right.
The descent will be carried out autonomously, without human intervention, but will be monitored from the company’s control center. Astrobotic’s mission comes as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, in which US companies are commissioned to send scientific experiments and technologies to the Moon.
The goal of the CLPS program is to develop a lunar economy and provide transport services at a lower cost. “One of the big challenges of what we’re attempting here is attempting a launch and landing on the surface Moon for a fraction of what it would otherwise cost,” said Thornton at a press briefing.
Despite the risks, NASA has signed contracts with multiple companies as part of the CLPS program, including Firefly Aerospace, Draper, and Intuitive Machines. Chris Culbert, the CLPS program manager, stated that “even if every landing isn’t successful, CLPS already had an impact on the commercial infrastructure needed to establish a lunar economy.”
If successful, Astrobotic would become the first private company to land on the Moon, after previous attempts by other private companies and countries ended in crashes. Only four countries have successfully landed on the Moon: the United States, Russia, China, and India.
With the Artemis program, NASA aims to establish a base on the surface of the Moon, and the success of commercial ventures like Astrobotic’s mission will be crucial in achieving this goal.