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Associated Press

China and India scored moon landings, while Russia, Japan and Israel ended up in the lunar rubbish heap.
Now two private companies are hustling to get the US back in the game, more than five decades after the Apollo programme ended.
It is part of a Nasa-supported effort to kick-start commercial moon deliveries, as the space agency focuses on getting astronauts back there.
“They’re scouts going to the moon ahead of us,” said Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson.




Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology is up first with a planned lift-off of a lander on Monday aboard a brand new rocket, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan. Houston’s Intuitive Machines aims to launch a lander in mid-February, hopping a flight with SpaceX.
Then there is Japan, which will attempt to land in two weeks. The Japanese Space Agency’s lander with two toy-size rovers had a big head start, sharing a September launch with an X-ray telescope that stayed behind in orbit around Earth.
If successful, Japan will become the fifth country to pull off a lunar landing. Russia and the US did it repeatedly in the 1960s and 70s.
China has landed three times in the past decade – including on the moon’s far side – and is returning to the far side later this year to bring back lunar samples. And just last summer, India did it. Only the US has put astronauts on the moon.
Japan moon probe enters lunar orbit, set for historic landing on January 20
Landing without wrecking is no easy feat. There is hardly any atmosphere to slow spacecraft, and parachutes obviously will not work. That means a lander must descend using thrusters, while navigating past treacherous cliffs and craters.
A Japanese millionaire’s company, ispace, saw its lander smash into the moon last April, followed by Russia’s crash landing in August.
India triumphed a few days later near the south polar region; it was the country’s second try after crashing in 2019. An Israeli non-profit also slammed into the moon in 2019.
The United States has not attempted a moon landing since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, the last of 12 moonwalkers, explored the grey, dusty surface in December 1972.

Mars beckoned and the moon receded in Nasa’s rear-view mirror, as the space race between the US and the Soviet Union came to a close. The US followed with a handful or two of lunar satellites, but no controlled landers – until now.
Not only are Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines looking to end America’s moon-landing drought, they’re vying for bragging rights as the first private entity to land – gently – on the moon.
Despite its later start, Intuitive Machines has a faster, more direct shot and should land within a week of lift-off. It will take Astrobotic two weeks just to get to the moon and another month in lunar orbit, before a landing is attempted on Feb. 23.
If there are rocket delays, which already have stalled both missions, either company could wind up there first.
“It’s going to be a wild, wild ride,” promised Astrobotic’s chief executive John Thornton.
Japan could send first astronaut to moon under US-led Artemis project
Thornton’s counterpart at Intuitive Machines, Steve Altemus, said the space race is “more about the geopolitics, where China is going, where the rest of the world’s going”. That said, “We sure would like to be first.”
The two companies have been nose to nose since receiving nearly US$80 million each in 2019 under a Nasa programme to develop lunar delivery services. Fourteen companies are now under contract by Nasa.
Astrobotic’s four-legged, six-foot-tall (1.9-metre-tall) lander, named Peregrine after the fastest bird, a falcon, will carry 20 research packages to the moon for seven countries, including five for Nasa and a shoebox-sized rover for Carnegie Mellon University.
Peregrine will aim for the mid-latitudes’ Sinus Viscositatis, or Bay of Stickiness, named after the long-ago silica magma that formed the nearby Gruithuisen Domes.


Intuitive Machines’ six-legged, 14-foot-tall (4-metre-tall) lander, Nova-C, will target the moon’s south polar region, also carrying five experiments for Nasa that will last about two weeks.
The company is targeting 80 degrees south latitude for touchdown. That would be well within Antarctica on Earth, Altemus noted, and 10 degrees closer to the pole than India landed last summer.
Scientists believe the south pole’s permanently shadowed craters hold billions of pounds of frozen water that could be used for drinking and making rocket fuel.
That is why the first moonwalkers in Nasa’s Artemis programme – named after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology – will land there.
Chinese scientists think diamonds might be present on mysterious planet Mercury
Nasa still has 2025 on the books for that launch, but the General Accountability Office suspects it will be closer to 2027.
Astrobotic will head to the south pole on its second flight, carrying Nasa’s water-seeking Viper rover. And Intuitive Machines will return there on its second mission, delivering an ice drill for Nasa.
Landing near the moon’s south pole is particularly dicey.
“It’s so rocky and craggy and full of craters at the south pole and mountainous, that it’s very difficult to find a lighted region to touch down safely,” Altemus said.
“So you’ve got to be able to finesse that and just set it down right in the right spot.”

While Houston has long been associated with space, Pittsburgh is a newcomer.
To commemorate the Steel City, Astrobotic’s lander will carry a Kennywood amusement park token, the winner of a public vote that beat the “Terrible Towel” waved at American football games by fans of the local team The Steelers, dirt from Moon Township’s Moon Park, and a Heinz pickle pin.
The lander is also carrying the ashes or DNA from 70 people, including Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.
Another 265 people will be represented on the rocket’s upper stage, which will circle the sun once separated from the lander.
They include three original Star Trek cast members, as well as strands of hair from three US presidents: George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.


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United States

Private companies to attempt first US moon landings since Apollo missions half a century ago

American astronaut Eugene A. Cernan stands near the lunar rover on the moon on December, 12 1972. Photo: Nasa / EPA / Handout

An illustration of Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander on the surface of the moon. It is expected to launch on Monday. Photo: Astrobotic Technology via AP

Intuitive Machines’ M-1 Nova-C lunar lander in Houston in October 2023. The company aims to launch the lander in mid-February on a SpaceX rocket. Photo: Intuitive Machines via AP

US military’s secretive X-37B space plane launched on possible higher-orbit mission

The US military’s X-37B space plane. File photo: US Air Force

The X-37B space plane lifts off on its seventh mission, its first launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Photo: Reuters

Japan could send first astronaut to moon under US-led Artemis project

Spectators at the exhibition ‘’The Moonwalkers: A journey with Tom Hanks’’, at Lightroom in London. Photo” AP

China storms ahead in space weather research with largest observatory on Earth

A network of observatories across China will be used to monitor the effects of flares from the sun as they travel through solar-terrestrial space to Earth’s atmosphere. Photo: Nasa

The Sanya Incoherent Scatter Radar uses radio waves to collect the basic parameters of the ionosphere.

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World

United States & Canada

Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are vying for bragging rights as first private entity to land on moon. US has not attempted moon landing since 1972
It is part of a Nasa-supported effort to kick-start commercial moon deliveries, as the space agency focuses on getting astronauts back there


Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are looking to end America’s moon-landing drought and vying for bragging rights as the first private entity to land on the moon.


Private companies to attempt first US moon landings since Apollo missions half a century ago

Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are vying for bragging rights as first private entity to land on moon. US has not attempted moon landing since 1972 It is part of a Nasa-supported effort to kick-start commercial moon deliveries, as the space agency focuses on getting astronauts back there

Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are vying for bragging rights as first private entity to land on moon. US has not attempted moon landing since 1972

It is part of a Nasa-supported effort to kick-start commercial moon deliveries, as the space agency focuses on getting astronauts back there