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The countdown to launch is on . United Launch Alliance ’s Vulcan Centaur roquette has been rolled to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station forwards of its early Monday morning launch , a mission that could end with the first fully private space vehicle shoot down on the moon .
Vulcan ’s primary lading isAstrobotic’sPeregrine lunar lander . If all move to design , Peregrine will embark on a journeying to the moon over the brace of around 1.5 months , before assay to shoot down on the control surface on February 23 . The two companies had been targeting a Christmas Eve launch , but ULA decided to postpone due to earth arrangement issues .
That ’s how we roll.#ToryTimelapse#VulcanRocketpic.twitter.com/3bz9LgMZ0r
— Tory Bruno ( @torybruno)January 5 , 2024
“ If you ’ve been following the lunar industry , you understand land on the Moon ’s open is improbably difficult , ” Astrobotic chief executive officer John Thornton aver in a press release last calendar month . “ With that said , our team has continuously surpassed expectations and demonstrate incredible cleverness during flight of stairs reviews , spacecraft testing , and major hardware integrations . We are quick for launching , and for land . ”
ULA and Pittsburgh - base Astrobotic are not the only firms with much horseback riding on Monday ’s launching . This will also be the first clip Blue Origin ’s BE-4 Eruca vesicaria sativa engines take flight on Vulcan ’s first - stage shoplifter ( after year of delays ) , and the first deputation as part of NASA ’s programme to kickstart payload delivery to the lunar surface .
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That program , Commercial Lunar Payload Services ( CLPS ) , has jointly doled out hundreds of trillion to spur private growth of moon landers . For this commission , Astrobotic was award $ 79.5 million from NASA in 2019 .
The delegation is slat to take off at 2:18 a.m. ET Monday . NASA will livestream the foreign mission on its YouTube TV channel .
The launch will be the first of many heading to the moon this yr . Other lunar launches slated for 2024 admit Intuitive Machines IM-1 lander , which is scheduled for liftoff on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in February ; Japanese firm ispace ’s 2d lunar mission ( their first lander crashed into the lunar Earth’s surface briefly before touchdown ) ; and Firefly Aerospace ’s Blue Ghost lander in the third quarter of 2024 . ( Both Intuitive Machines ’ and Firefly ’s missions are part of the CLPS plan . )
With such a lineup , it ’s highly likely that 2024 will be the yr that a private company land a spacecraft on the moonshine for the first sentence , and the first time an American entity has gone to the lunar surface since 1972 .
Astrobotic will seek to land Peregrine near a part of the lunation known as the Gruithuisen Domes , and it will be give birth a handful of NASA load and scientific instrument that will strive to better sympathize the lunar environment . Peregrine will also be fork up around 15 non - NASA payloads , include a rover from Carnegie Mellon University and a robotic project called Coleman from the Mexican Space Agency .
