NASA’s first mission to land on the moon: Apollo 17 walk, Peregrine lander, and Artemis program for the next few years

The first US mission to land on the moon since 1972 was the target of a private robotic vessel launched today. NASA designed five scientific instruments that will be used on the project, in order to open a new era in lunar research.

NASA gave millions of dollars to the companies to build and fly their own lunar landers. The space agency wants the privately owned landers to scope out the place before astronauts arrive while delivering NASA tech and science experiments as well as odds and ends for other customers. Astrobotic’s contract for the Peregrine lander: $108 million.

The last time the U.S. launched a moon-landing mission was in December 1972. The era when NASA was at its best was ended with the Apollo 17 walk on the moon, as Gene and Harrison became the 12th and 11th men to do so.

The space agency’s new Artemis program — named after the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology — looks to return astronauts to the moon’s surface within the next few years. A lunar fly-around with four astronauts is probably before year’s end.

The Vulcan rocket and the lunar landings of Nova-C, Israel, and Intuitive Machines in the wake of the December December objections

Highlighting Monday’s moonshot was the long-delayed initial test flight of the Vulcan rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The 202-foot (61-meter) rocket is essentially an upgraded version of ULA’s hugely successful workhorse Atlas V, which is being phased out along with the company’s Delta IV. The Vulcan’s two main engines were supplied by Blue Origin.

The U.S. and the Soviet Union had a lot of successful moon landings in the 1960s and 70s. China joined the elite club in 2013 and India in 2023. Last year there were landers from Russia and a private Japanese company on the moon. An organization in Israel crashed in 2019.

Next month, SpaceX will provide the lift for a lander from Intuitive Machines. Both ships could land within days or even hours of one another if the Nova-C landers’ more direct route is anything to go by.

The human remains caused the launch to be delayed. It would be considered a “profound desecration” of a body revered by Native Americans. Thornton promised to try to find a good path forward for future missions in the wake of the December objections.

Celestis, a spaceflight memorial company, stated in a statement that no culture or religion can veto a mission to the moon. The rocket will circle the sun as far as Mars once it returns from the landers and remains on the upper stage.

Peregrine: The first flight of a private space agency to orbit the lunar south pole, and where to land for future exploration missions

Cargo fares for Peregrine ranged from a few hundred dollars to $1.2 million per kilogram (2.2 pounds), not nearly enough for Astrobotic to break even. Thornton says that it isn’t the point for this first flight.

Other payloads aboard the Peregrine lander include less scientific cargo, such as artwork, a physical Bitcoin token loaded with one BTC of the actual cryptocurrency, and a Japanese time capsule containing 185,872 messages from children around the world. Following the lander’s successful separation from Centaur’s upper stage, the rocket will now carry the DNA and cremated human remains of several notable celebrities — including Star Trek legends Gene and Majel Roddenberry, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, and James Doohan — for a space burial aboard Celestis’ personal flight capsules.

That is if another private venture arrives later than anticipated. The company from Houston is going to use a private space company to launch a mission, which will be done on the day of the ULA mission.

For those who have worked for years on payloads flying aboard Peregrine, today’s launch is a major milestone. The mini-rover project was the culmination of a childhood dream, according to the physicist who leads the project. And yet, he adds, “space is a risky business, and there are many things that can go wrong at any one of innumerable parts, components and stages”.

The CLPS programme has had some growing pains, including delays that pushed its first launch back by two years. One of the companies originally awarded a launch slot went bankrupt, cancelling its mission. As designs evolve, landers have had to be changed. NASA’s planned missions for Peregrine were thrown out when Astrobotic discovered it needed more time to put so much mass on the ship.

The agency is planning to send astronauts to the lunar south pole in the coming years to search for resources such as water ice. It says that some of the CLPS missions can test science and technology needed for that exploration, such as an ice-drilling rover set to launch as early as November.

One of the next missions is expected to land in a crater on the lunar south pole in the middle of February. Because the Intuitive Machines lander is travelling a different trajectory than Peregrine, it could actually land on or before 22 February, which would beat Peregrine to the surface. The NASA instruments on board the lander study how exhaust from the rocket interacts with the surface during landing.

According to John Thornton, the chief executive officer of Astrobotic, the company has a goal of making space accessible to people around the world. He hopes that they can find a way to work with the Navajo Nation.

Peregrine also carries non-scientific payloads, including art and educational projects, for paying customers. Some people are angry that cremated human remains are being sent to the moon. The ashes being placed on the moon is a sacrilegious practice that disrespects a sacred object to the people of the region. The ashes of Eugene Shoemaker were flown to the Moon by NASA in 1999. The agency has a meeting planned with Navajo leaders, as well as with the US Department of Transportation, to discuss next steps.

The five NASA instruments on board, paid for in a US$108-million contract, include three that will hunt for volatile elements, such as water. One is a mass spectrometer that will measure the composition of volatile substances in the soil and atmosphere, including in the lunar dust kicked up by Peregrine during landing and by the roaming mini rovers. The observations will take approximately two minutes and provide a detailed view of how the composition changes over time. Another instrument will count neutrons to measure how much water is present in the lunar soil. All three instruments aim to analyse how volatile molecules move around on the lunar surface — including how they are transported to the Moon’s poles, where they are frozen in dark craters. Water in the craters is a potential base for future astronauts.

The Bay of Stickiness is named after rock domes that appear to have formed from lava. If the 2-metre-tall spacecraft lands successfully, it will start conducting science with a variety of instruments from NASA and others. There are a set of tiny rovers from Mexico that will be the Latin America’s first lunar mission, as well as a detector from Germany that will measure radiation levels on the moon to better understand what future astronauts might be exposed to.

The difficult process of landing on the Moon begins with today’s launch. The spacecraft, which is called Peregrine and was built by the company Astrobotic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, still has to successfully enter lunar orbit and then touch down safely. The attempt to land will be made on 23 February.

Launching a Lunar Payload Services Programme at the Johnson Space Center with the Commercial Lunar Program at the Fermilab Tevatron

NASA wants to do two flights per year, but as many as six could happen in the coming years. Chris Culbert is the programme manager of the CLPS at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

The launch is the first of at least ten planned through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme, in which the agency pays private companies to deliver scientific instruments to the Moon’s surface. If the programme succeeds, NASA will essentially be outsourcing future robotic lunar missions to private companies — a sort of Uber Eats delivery for Moon science.