From Cape Canaveral, Florida, SpaceX launched two lunar landers on Wednesday for American and Japanese businesses aiming to establish a lunar commercial presence.
These landers, launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center late at night, represent the latest in a series of privately developed spacecraft targeting the moon. To reduce costs, they shared the initial launch before separating an hour later to embark on independent, multi-month journeys.
This marks a second attempt for Tokyo-based ispace, whose initial lander crashed two years ago. This time, their lander carries a rover equipped to collect lunar soil samples for analysis and to assess potential food and water resources for future human exploration.
Texas-based Firefly Aerospace, a newcomer to lunar missions, is delivering ten NASA experiments, including a soil collection vacuum, a subsurface temperature probe, and a device designed to protect future moonwalkers’ suits and equipment from abrasive lunar dust.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander—named for a southeastern U.S. firefly species—is expected to arrive first, aiming for a landing in early March at Mare Crisium, a volcanic plain in the moon’s northern latitudes.
ispace’s slightly larger lander, named Resilience, will arrive four to five months later, targeting a landing in late May or early June at Mare Frigoris, further north on the near side of the moon.
ispace’s CEO, Takeshi Hakamada, emphasized that this isn’t a race, stating that the focus is not on speed.
Both Hakamada and Firefly CEO Jason Kim acknowledged the significant challenges, given previous mission failures. Only five nations—the former Soviet Union, the U.S., China, India, and Japan—have successfully landed spacecraft on the moon since the 1960s.
Kim expressed confidence in their engineering, though he added an Irish shamrock to his lapel for luck.
The U.S. remains the sole nation to have landed astronauts on the moon. NASA’s Artemis program aims to return astronauts to the moon by the end of the decade.
NASA’s science mission chief, Nicky Fox, explained that numerous science and technology missions are being sent to the moon in advance of the Artemis program.
Upon successful landing, both spacecraft will operate during the lunar daytime, shutting down during the dark period.
ispace’s 11-pound rover will remain close to the lander, moving at a slow speed in a circular pattern, carrying a small red house designed by a Swedish artist.
NASA is contributing $101 million to Firefly for the mission and $44 million for the experiments. Hakamada declined to disclose the cost of ispace’s mission, stating it’s less than the $100 million spent on their previous attempt.
Houston-based Intuitive Machines’ second lunar mission is scheduled for late February. Last year, they achieved the first U.S. lunar landing in over 50 years, despite a sideways landing near the south pole.
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