WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A robotic lander built by private U.S. company Astrobotic was on its way to the Moon on Monday, after being launched into space aboard a new Vulcan rocket designed by a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin .
The American robotics company’s Peregrine lunar lander was launched into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 2:18 a.m. (local time) on the occasion of the first flight of Vulcan, a powerful rocket developed for ten years by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed.
“I’m very happy,” said Tory Bruno, ULA’s general manager, from the control room. “It’s the culmination of years of hard work. So far, it’s been an absolutely magnificent mission.”
If all goes well, Peregrine would mark the United States’ first soft moon landing since the last Apollo mission in 1972, and the first ever moon landing by a private company.
Applause rang out in the control room as Peregrine was released from its propulsion stage, sending the golf cart-sized craft on its way on a 46-day journey to the Moon.
This mission comes at a time when countries and private companies are once again embarking on the conquest of the Moon, while scientists hope that minerals containing water can be exploited to support long-term astronaut missions.
The launch of Vulcan, a 60-meter-tall rocket powered by engines made by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, was a crucial first for ULA, which developed the rocket to replace Atlas V, and thus compete with the reusable Falcon 9 of Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the satellite launch market.
The stakes are high for Vulcan as Boeing and Lockheed, which own ULA equally, have been seeking to sell the company for about a year.
The launch also represents the first of two certification flights required by the US Space Force before Vulcan can carry out lucrative missions for the Pentagon, a key customer.
Peregrine is scheduled to land on the Moon on February 23, with scientific instruments on board to collect data on the composition of the lunar surface before planned future human missions.
This is the first expedition to the lunar surface as part of NASA’s Artemis program.
Last year, India became the fourth country to achieve a soft moon landing, after Russia’s failed attempt the same month.
Private companies betting on a lunar market have had a difficult time, with the Japanese company ispace and an Israeli company crash-landing in their first attempts.
(Reporting Joey Roulette; French version Stéphanie Hamel, editing by Kate Entringer)
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