First US lunar lander in five decades blasts off on private mission

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – The first American spacecraft to attempt to land on the Moon in more than half a century successfully launched early on Jan 8, with private industry leading the charge.

A brand-new rocket, United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 2.18am (3.18pm Singapore time) for its maiden voyage, carrying Astrobotic’s Peregrine Lunar Lander.

Mission control staff cheered and applauded as the lander separated from the rocket around 48 minutes later without problems – a key milestone for the private company.

ULA’s president and chief executive Tory Bruno praised the launch on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (Nasa) live stream.

“I am so thrilled,” he said. “This has been years of hard work.”

He added: “So far, this has been an absolutely beautiful mission back to the Moon.”

Mr Eric Monda, ULA’s strategic planning director, described the launch as “spot on”.

“It was so cool. I ran outside to watch the launch,” he said.

If all goes to plan, Peregrine will touch down on a mid-latitude region of the Moon called Sinus Viscositatis, or Bay of Stickiness, on Feb 23.

Until now, a soft landing on Earth’s nearest celestial neighbour has been accomplished only by a handful of national space agencies. The Soviet Union was first, in 1966, followed by the United States, which is still the only country to put people on the Moon.

China has successfully landed three times over the past decade, while India was the most recent to achieve the feat on its second attempt in 2023.

Now, the United States is turning to the commercial sector in an effort to stimulate a broader lunar economy and ship its own hardware at a fraction of the cost, under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme.

“Leading America back to the surface of the Moon for the first time since Apollo is a momentous honour,” Astrobotic’s chief executive John Thornton said ahead of the launch.

A challenging task

Nasa paid Astrobotic more than $100 million (S$133 million) for the task, while another contracted company, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, is looking to launch in February and land near the Moon’s south pole.

“We think that it’s going to allow... more cost-effective and more rapidly accomplished trips to the lunar surface to prepare for Artemis,” said Dr Joel Kearns, Nasa deputy associate administrator for exploration.

Artemis is the Nasa-led programme to return astronauts to the Moon later this decade, in preparation for future missions to Mars.

Controlled touchdown on the Moon is a challenging undertaking, with roughly half of all attempts ending in failure.

In the absence of an atmosphere that would allow the use of parachutes, a spacecraft must navigate treacherous terrain using only its thrusters to slow descent.

Private missions by Israel and Japan, as well as a recent attempt by the Russian space agency, ended in failure – though the Japanese space agency is targeting mid-January for the touchdown of its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or Slim, launched in September 2023.

This is the first launch for ULA’s Vulcan rocket, although the company claims a 100 per cent success rate in more than 150 prior launches.

ULA’s new rocket is planned to have reusable first-stage booster engines, which the company, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, expects will help it achieve cost savings.

Science instruments, human remains

On board Peregrine is a suite of scientific instruments that will probe radiation and surface composition, helping to pave the way for the return of astronauts.

But it also contains more colourful cargo, including a shoebox-sized rover built by Carnegie Mellon University, a physical Bitcoin and, somewhat controversially, cremated remains and DNA, including those of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, legendary sci-fi author and scientist Arthur C. Clarke, and a dog.

The Navajo Nation, America’s largest indigenous tribe, has said sending these to the Moon desecrates a space that is sacred to their culture and have pleaded for the cargo’s removal.

Though they were granted a last-ditch meeting with White House, Nasa and other officials, their objections have been ignored.

The Vulcan rocket’s upper stage, which will circle the Sun after it deploys the lander, is carrying more remains of late cast members of Star Trek, as well as hair samples of US presidents George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. AFP