by COLORADO SPRINGS – Astrobotic’s next lunar mission will send not one but two rovers to Earth’s closest neighbor.
The Pittsburgh-based company plans to launch the first-ever mission of its Griffin lunar lander atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket later this year. Griffin’s main job is to deliver NASA’s ice-hunting VIPER rover to the moon’s south polar region, but we learned Monday (April 8) that the other lander will also do less.
Astrobotic’s CubeRover, a small modular machine designed to make lunar exploration accessible to a variety of customers, is also traveling on the Griffin-1 mission. It will be operated using Spacefarer, a software platform developed by the Canadian company Mission Control.
“What an exciting time in space exploration, because commercial companies are at the beginning of creating a new market economy on the moon,” said Lisa Campbell, president of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), on Monday during a press conference was held here. at the 39th Space Symposium.
“This mission promises to be groundbreaking, a demonstration of commercial space technology,” she said. “But quite frankly, I think it’s only going to grow from here.”
Related: Missions to the Moon: Past, Present and Future
Griffin will descend on Mons Mouton, a flat-topped mountain about the size of Delaware.
It is VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover); Astrobotic received a $199.5 million contract from NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program in June 2020 to safely land VIPER on the gray dirt. (The contract is end-to-end, meaning that Astrobotic was also responsible for securing the launch vehicle.)
Mons Mouton is near the south pole of the moon. This region is thought to be rich in water ice, which explains why NASA plans to build a base in the area through its Artemis program. But it’s unclear how much ice is actually present near the south pole, and how accessible it is – and that’s where VIPER comes in.
The 1,000-pound (450 kilogram) rover, which is the size of a golf cart, will spend about 100 days on Earth mapping out the distribution and concentration of water ice in the Mons Mouton area.
“NASA will use the data collected by the rover to show where lunar ice is most likely to be found and most easily accessible, making VIPER the first-ever resource mapping mission on another celestial body,” officials wrote NASA in mission description. “The first resource maps of the moon will be a critical step forward for NASA’s Artemis missions to establish a long-term presence on the lunar surface.”
Meanwhile, the shoebox-sized CubeRover will embark on a demonstration mission supported by the CSA’s Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program. The small rover will be deployed after VIPER, escaping from Griffin down to the lunar dirt on cables.
CubeRover will operate on the surface for one lunar day, which is equivalent to about two Earth weeks. It will conduct communications trials with Griffin, drive under the lander’s shadow to test its ability to handle thermal extremes, and demonstrate the ability of Spacefarer’s operating platform on the moon for the first time, if all goes according to plan.
And this first mission will be just the beginning for CubeRover, according to Astrobotic. The wheeled robot can be scaled up to accommodate larger payloads; future versions could haul science instruments and other gear around the moon and remain operational for a year or more, according to Mike Provenzano, vice president of advanced development programs at Astrobotic.
“We are really happy with the opportunities that will be available to the [lunar business] ecosystem,” Provenzano said during Monday’s press briefing.
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Griffin-1 will not be Astrobotic’s first lunar mission. The company’s smaller Peregrine moon lander launched Jan. 8 as United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket lifted off for the first time.
The launch was successful, but Peregrine suffered a problem with its propulsion system shortly after being deployed from the Vulcan Centaur upper stage. That question related to the lander’s planned lunar mission, which was also funded by CLPS; On January 18, Astrobotic guided the Falcon to a controlled destruction in Earth’s atmosphere.
Twenty payloads went down with Peregrine, including Iris, a CubeRover-like robot developed by students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Astrobotic has revealed a few more payloads that will fly on Griffin-1 in addition to VIPER and CubeRover. The European Space Agency’s LandCam-X lander camera system is also growing, for example, and NASA’s laser reflector. More payrolls could be announced in the coming weeks and months, company representatives said Monday.
