Yesterday, two private lunar landers were launched by SpaceX. This will be for US and Japanese companies looking to stake their place on the moon. The shared flight was only half an hour before splitting for individual routes by each lander into lunar orbit for separate lunar surface trajectories.
This was a giant step forward not just for SpaceX, but for lunar-bound private operators as they proceed with their quest to mark space in the lunar domain.
Among them, one lander is a two-time flyer that comes from ispace of the Japanese company after its previous bid two years back failed to take off successfully, per AP News. This time round, the rover carried by the ispace's lander boasts of being geared with sampling devices for the extraction of soil and testing lunar materials for food or water to facilitate future missions into the moon.
Meanwhile, the Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace is sending its own lander, Blue Ghost, which will conduct 10 experiments for NASA. These include measuring the temperature below the lunar surface and testing a device that protects spacesuits from moon dust.
The two landers will arrive at the moon at different times. Firefly's Blue Ghost is to land first, in early March, at Mare Crisium, a volcanic plain on the moon. The ispace lander, Resilience, will take the longer journey with a planned landing in late May or early June at Mare Frigoris, located farther north. Both of them are well aware of the risks, for since the 1960s, only a few countries have successfully landed spacecraft on the moon.
What's the Mission of the Two Private Lunar Landers on Moon?
Both companies are preparing for the possibility of failure in this scientific-data-gathering mission but will, if successful, operate landers in constant daylight for two weeks before shutting down. ispace's rover will, at its own slow speed, surface-roam the lunar and deliver a small red house designed by Swedish artist Hanna Ljungberg.
NASA will finance the mission by giving $101 million to Firefly, but there is no stated budget for the mission led by ispace; it will likely be lower compared to its initial, unsuccessful try, Nature reported. Their missions are opening ways toward the moon as a potential location for lunar explorations for years to come with the plans under the Artemis program from NASA to return humans back to the moon soon.
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