Almost six decades after, on February 3, 1966, the Soviet Union managed to land softly on the Moon with its Luna 9 probe, placing a device on our satellite remains a high-risk undertaking. India, which landed on the moon with its module Vikram last year and became the fourth country to achieve it, it had failed in a previous attempt, in 2019. That same year, the Israeli company SpaceIL also crashed when trying to be the first private project to arrive, a milestone that also did not The Japanese Ispace reached in 2023. With this background, today the Peregrino 1 mission is launched, the first attempt at a commercial robotic flight to the Moon of NASA's CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative. The mission, led by the Pittsburgh company Astrobiotics, is part of the plan to return to the Moon as part of the Artemis program, in which the United States, Europe, Japan and other countries collaborate to establish lunar colonies at the end of this decade. and prepare the assault on Mars within 20 years.
“They are explorers going to the Moon before us,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. If it lands successfully, it will be the first time that the United States has landed on the Moon since 1972.
The Pilgrim 1, which measures almost two meters high by two and a half wide and has a capacity of 120 kilos, will depart from Cape Canaveral, in Florida (USA), at 8:18 Spanish peninsular time. And it will do so aboard the new United Launch Alliance rocket, the Vulcan Centaur. It will be the rocket's first mission and also the inaugural flight for the Blue Engine 4 engines, two innovations that add uncertainty to a mission with many pioneering features. If everything goes well, the trip to the Moon will last about 12 days, and the probe will land in the Sinus Viscositatis (Bay of Stickiness) region, a territory named this way in 2022 and over which lava flowed millions of years ago.
The lander carries 20 payloads, including five NASA instruments. The space agency, which was put in the hands of this private initiative in 2019, wants to take measurements of the lunar atmosphere, the composition of the soil regolith or the radioactive environment that the astronauts will face. Along with these tools, there are objects from seven countries. Among them, more scientific material, such as a radiation detector from the German Aerospace Center, but also more symbolic things, such as a time capsule with messages from 80,000 children from around the world, and DNA samples and ashes from 70 humans sent by the American space burial company Elysium Space. Among these samples are those of the creator of Star TrekGene Roddenberry, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, and three United States presidents: George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.
Above all, the Pilgrim 1 mission will be the first step in a new model of traveling to the Moon, which can make the satellite more accessible to scientists and which may be a more efficient way for NASA to begin lunar colonization. Success or failure, this mission will be the first of ten CLPS scheduled in the near future and John Thornton, CEO of Astrobiotic, has already warned that a setback will not stop them. With a budget slightly larger than that of previous projects, such as the Indian Chandrayaan-3 or the Israeli Beresheetthe Astrobiotic mission is estimated to be around $100 million, less than half that of the movie Avatar.
The last time US astronauts were on the surface of the Moon was in 1972. Former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said that this mission is “a huge step for our Artemis lunar exploration plans.” “Our scientific and technological research will be carried out on the lunar surface, which will support the sending of the first woman and the next man to the Moon. Investing in these commercial landing services is also another big step in building a commercial economy in space beyond low-Earth orbit,” he added.
Another private company, Intuitive Machines (of Houston), aims to launch a lander in mid-February, flying on a SpaceX rocket. But first the focus will be on Japan, which will attempt to land on the moon on January 19. The Japanese Space Agency's lander, which has two small rovers, was launched in September along with a space telescope. If successful, Japan will become the fifth country to make a soft landing on the Moon, after the Soviet Union, the United States, India and China, which has landed three times in the last decade and plans to collect samples again at the end of this year. And just last summer, India did it.
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