SpaceX launches two lunar landers to the moon

Two privately built lunar landers were speeding towards the moon on Wednesday after space start-ups from Texas and Japan split the cost of an early-hours ride aboard a SpaceX Falcon rocket.

The 1.11am ET launch from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center saw a rover from the Tokyo company ispace share cargo space with a lander from Cedar Park-based Firefly Aerospace, whose Blue Ghost Mission 1 will conduct a number of experiments for Nasa after it touches down in early March.

The two spacecraft will head independently towards lunar orbit after separation an hour into flight, with the US vehicle set to land first, and the larger ispace lander arriving in late May or early June.

For the Japanese company, which named its rover Resilience, the mission is an opportunity for redemption after its attempt in April 2023 to make the first private moon landing ended in failure when it accelerated unexpectedly and crashed into the lunar surface.

Resilience will collect moon dust for analysis, and test potential water and food sources for future crewed missions, as the 11lb (5kg) rover makes a series of short, slow sorties from its lander, which is targeted to touch down at Mare Frigoris in the moon’s far north.

In a tweet Wednesday morning, ispace managers said they had “established a communication link with the Resilience lunar lander and confirmed a stable attitude as well as stable generation of electrical power in orbit”.

The goals for the US-built lander are broadly similar, and if successful will help pave the way for more regular human voyages to the moon after Nasa’s Artemis III mission, currently scheduled for mid-2027, makes the first crewed touchdown since the final Apollo mission in 1972.

Nasa has paid Firefly, making its first spaceflight, $145m for the mission and 10 experiments, which include vacuuming dirt, drilling below the surface to measure temperatures, and testing a device that could allow astronauts to remove abrasive particles from spacesuits and other equipment.

Blue Ghost’s mission managers will conduct further research during the journey, including navigation system tests and a system to protect vital computer equipment from radiation in space.

Both the US and Japanese craft will be operational for about two weeks after landing on the moon, the daylight portion of a single lunar day, before being plunged into darkness and shutting down.

Just before lunar night, Firefly chief executive Jason Kim said, Blue Ghost will capture high-definition imagery of a total eclipse from the moon, in which Earth blocks the sun. The lunar sunset will provide data about the reaction of regolith, the loose, unconsolidated material that coats the moon’s surface, with lunar dusk conditions.

“We expect to capture a phenomenon documented by Eugene Cernan on Apollo 17 where he observed a horizon glow as the lunar dust levitated on the surface,” Kim said.

“As a tribute to the last Apollo astronaut to walk on the moon, we’re honored to have the opportunity to watch this incredible sight in high definition.”

Nasa’s contract with Firefly is part of a private-public partnership for the Artemis program designed to involve commercial industry in flights to the moon, previously the exclusive domain of government operations.

Next month Intuitive Machines, the Texas company that in February last year became the first private operator to successfully make a lunar touchdown with its Odysseus spacecraft, is scheduled to make the second of four contracted moon missions. IM2 will carry a lander containing water hunting equipment and the novel Micro-Nova hopper than can jump experiments in and out of shaded areas.

Only five countries have landed vehicles successfully on the moon since the 1960s: the US, China, India, Japan and the former Soviet Union.

• The Associated Press contributed reporting