by CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — China and India scored moon landings, while Russia, Japan and Israel ended up in the lunar dustbin.
Now two private companies are scrambling to get the United States back in the game, more than five decades after the Apollo program ended.
It is part of a NASA-backed effort to begin commercial lunar deliveries, with the space agency aiming to get astronauts back there.
“They are scouts going to the moon before us,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology is a first with a lander scheduled to lift off Monday aboard a brand new rocket, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan. Houston’s Intuitive Machines aims to launch a lander in mid-February, hoping to fly with SpaceX.
Then there is Japan, who will try to land in two weeks. The Japanese Space Agency’s lander has made major progress with two toy-sized rovers, sharing its September launch with an X-ray telescope that stayed behind in Earth orbit.
If successful, Japan will become the fifth country to achieve a lunar landing. Russia and the United States did it repeatedly in the 1960s and 70s. China has landed three times in the past decade – including on the far side of the moon – and is returning to the far side later this year to bring back lunar samples. And just last summer, India did it. Only the US has put astronauts on the moon.
Landing without wreckage is no easy feat. There is hardly any atmosphere to slow spacecraft down, and a parachute obviously won’t work. That means a lander must come down using thrusters, and navigate over treacherous cliffs and craters.
A Japanese millionaire company, ispace, saw its lander enter the moon last April, followed by the Russian landing in August. India won a few days later near the south polar region; It was the country’s second attempt after crashing in 2019. The Israeli non-profit also slammed into the moon in 2019.
The United States has not attempted a lunar landing since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, the last of 12 moonwalkers, explored the gray, dusty surface in December 1972. Mars disappeared and d the moon rose in NASA’s rearview mirror, as the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union came to an end. The United States continued with a handful or two of lunar satellites, but no controlled partitions – until now.
Not only do Astronomical and Intuitive Machines want to end America’s moon landing drought, they want bragging rights as the first private entity to land – smoothly – on the moon.
Despite their later start, Intuitive Machines have a faster and more direct shot and should land within a week of liftoff. It will take Astrobotic two straight weeks to reach the moon and another month in lunar orbit, before landing on February 23.
If there are rocket delays, which have already halted both missions, either company could wind up there first.
“It’s going to be a wild, wild ride,” promised Astrobotic chief executive John Thornton.
His counterpart at Intuitive Machines, Steve Altemus, said that the space race “is more about the geopolitics, where China is going, where the rest of the world is going.” That said, “We definitely want to be first.”
The two companies have been nose to nose since they received nearly $80 million each in 2019 under NASA’s program to develop lunar delivery services. NASA now has fourteen companies under contract.
Astrobotic’s four-legged, 6-foot-tall (1.9-metre-tall) lander, named Peregrine after the fastest bird, a falcon, will carry 20 research packages to the moon for seven countries, with their -includes five for NASA and a shoebox size. rover for Carnegie Mellon University. The Falcon will focus on the mid-latitudes Sinus Viscositatis, or Bay of Stickiness, named for the siliceous magma that long ago formed the nearby Gruithuisen domes.
Intuitive Machines’ six-pronged, 14-foot-tall (4-meter-tall) Nova-C will focus on the moon’s south polar region, conducting five experiments for NASA that will last about two weeks. The company is targeting 80 degrees south latitude for touchdown. That would be well within Antarctica on Earth, Altemus noted, and 10 degrees closer to the pole than India landed last summer.
Scientists believe that the permanently shaded crater of the south pole has billions of pounds (kilograms) of frozen water that could be used to drink and make rocket fuel. That’s why the first moonwalkers in NASA’s Artemis program – named after Apollo’s twin sisters in Greek mythology – will land there. NASA still has 2025 on the books for that launch, but the General Accounting Office suspects it will be closer to 2027.
Constellation will go to the south pole on its second flight, carrying NASA’s water-seeking rover Viper. And Intuitive Machines will return there on its second mission, delivering an ice drill to NASA.
Landing near the moon’s south pole is particularly promising.
“It is so rocky and rocky and full of craters at the south pole and mountainous, that it is very difficult to get a lit region to touch down safely,” said Altemus. “So you need to be able to finesse that and just set it. down in the right place.”
While Houston has long been associated with space, Pittsburgh is a newcomer. To commemorate the Steel City, Astrobotic’s lander will carry a Kennywood amusement park sign, public vote winner the Steelers’ Awesome Towel worn at football games, dirt from Moon Township’s Moon Park, and Heinz pickle pins.
The lander is also carrying the ashes or DNA of 70 people, including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. Another 265 people will be represented on the rocket’s upper stage, which will circle the sun once it separates from the lander. Among them are three original “Star Trek” cast members, as well as strands of hair from three US presidents: George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Section is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Science and Media Education Group. The AP is solely responsible for all matters.
