Japanese and American companies are preparing lunar landers for launch in Florida Reuters writes
Author: Joey Roulette
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) – Two lunar landers, one from Japan’s iSpace and the other from U.S. space company Firefly, were attached to a SpaceX rocket in Florida on Tuesday ahead of an unusual double moon launch, underscoring a global rush to explore the lunar surface.
Japanese space exploration company ispace will launch its Hakuto-R 2 mission, making its second attempt to land on the moon after the initial mission in April 2023 failed in the final moments due to an altitude misjudgment.
While Texas-based Firefly Aerospace will launch its first lunar lander, the Blue Ghost, making it the third company to launch a lunar lander under NASA’s public-private Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. .
Last year’s Intuitive Machines moon landing, although unsuccessful and partially unsuccessful, marked the first private company and first CLPS mission to land on the moon. A previous lander attempt by CLPS member Astrobotica failed shortly after launch.
Countries and private companies around the world have focused on the moon in recent years for its potential to host astronaut bases and hold resources that could be mined for space applications, making Earth’s natural satellite a stage for national prestige and geopolitical competition similar to the Cold War-era Space Race.
Ispace’s Hakuto lander, called Resilience, is carrying a $16 million user mission and a total of six payloads, including an internal “Micro Rover” that will launch from the lander and collect lunar samples, ispace Chief Business Officer Jumpei Nozaki said in an interview.
Hakuto’s touchdown with the lunar surface is expected four to five months after launch or this summer. It will follow an energy-efficient trajectory that relies heavily on the Earth’s and the Moon’s gravity in a series of winding flybys to steer its trajectory.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost will aim for the Moon 45 days after launch, around March 2. That lander carries 10 payloads from various NASA-funded customers and one from Blue Origin-owned Honeybee Robotics.
The missions of both landers will last a full lunar day, or about two weeks. They will not survive the cold lunar night where temperatures can drop to about minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 128 Celsius).
NASA, with its Artemis program, aims to return humans to the moon by 2027 – but possibly later – for the first time since 1972, while China plans to send its own crew to the lunar surface by 2030 after a series of robotic missions.
CLPS missions such as Firefly’s Blue Ghost, privately owned but heavily funded by NASA, are intended to study the lunar surface and stimulate private lunar demand before NASA sends humans there using SpaceX’s Starship and later Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander .
But the US space agency faces potential changes to its Artemis program with the incoming administration of Donald Trump, who as president-elect has largely sided with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s vision of a strong focus on Mars.
“We invested in going to the moon and I think everyone wants us to go back to the moon,” Nicky Fox, head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate who oversees CLPS, told Reuters on Tuesday when asked about possible changes to the lunar program. .
“The great thing about NASA science — we do amazing science everywhere we go,” she said.
