FLORIDA, USA: The US companies are set to launch for the Moon on Valentine Day (February 14), less than a month since a similar mission ended in failure with the spaceship burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere, NASA said on Wednesday.
The upcoming attempt features a lander built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines attached to the top of a SpaceX rocket, while the latest attempt involved a United Launch Alliance rocket and an Astrobotics lander.
But the stakes remain just as high: achieving America’s first soft landing on the lunar surface since the end of the Apollo era five decades ago, and the first ever private industry.
SpaceX is targeting a 12:57 (0557 GMT) launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander expected to land on the moon on February 22 in an impact crater near the moon’s south pole.
NASA has paid Intuitive Machines more than $100 million to supply science hardware for the mission, part of a broader strategy to stimulate the lunar economy and delegate routine cargo missions to the private sector.
The “Nova-C” lander’s payload includes tools to better understand the lunar environment as NASA prepares to send a human crew back to the celestial body as part of the Artemis programme later this decade.
It also includes a more colorful load, including sculptures by the artist Jeff Koons.
Only five countries have achieved a soft landing on the moon. The Soviet Union was the first, followed by the United States, which is still the only country to have sent men to the moon. China has achieved this three times in the past decade, followed by India and most recently Japan.
The Japanese lander landed on January 20, but ended up on its side and its solar panels remained switched off.
Astrobotic’s failure was the third botched non-governmental mission effort, after an Israeli non-profit and a Japanese company crash-landed in 2019 and 2023, respectively.
Landing on the moon is complicated by treacherous terrain and a lack of atmosphere, meaning parachutes are out of the question and the spacecraft must use its thrusters to achieve a controlled descent.
