A few hours before sunrise Monday morning, United Launch Alliance's brand new Vulcan Centaur rocket is expected to make its maiden flight with a historic passenger on board: Peregrine, the first American lunar lander to be sent to the Moon in more than 50 years. years. And its mission could mark a turning point in humanity's exploration of the cosmos. Peregrine is not a NASA spacecraft, but one developed by Astrobotic, a private company based in Pittsburgh. If it survives the landing, Peregrine will be the first commercial craft to successfully land on the Moon – or any other planetary body besides Earth, for that matter.
Astrobotic is one of a small group of companies that have been selected to make lunar deliveries for the space agency over the next several years as part of NASA's new Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Peregrine Mission 1, scheduled to launch Jan. 8 at 2:18 a.m. ET, is the first such operation under a $79.5 million contract with the space agency. But this is a completely commercial enterprise, and in addition to the five payloads it will deliver to NASA to support upcoming Artemis missions, Peregrine will also have cargo on board for other customers, at a cost of 1, $2 million per kilogram (about 2.2 pounds). This includes mini rovers and scientific instruments, collections of art and archival materials, a physical “bitcoin” and, controversially, human remains.
Peregrine is heading toward the near side of the Moon, the hemisphere that always faces Earth. The 6-foot-tall, 8-foot-wide lander will (hopefully) land softly in a region named Sinus Viscositatis – the “Bay of Adhesion” – for mysterious domes believed to have formed long ago by thick silicic lava. These particular characteristics, called do not correspond to the surrounding basaltic terrain, nor does the moon host the ingredients known so far to give rise to silicic volcanoes.
“How domes form is a scientific mystery that we are still working to understand,” CLPS project scientist Paul Niles said during a briefing Thursday before the launch. Peregrine will land near the domes on a patch of lunar mare, or on the dark features created by hardened basalt lava flows that we can see from Earth. NASA payloads on board include a Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA), Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS), Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS), Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System ( NIRVSS) and a basking ion trap mass spectrometer (PITMS). These instruments will collect data to help characterize the local environment.
“Three of our instruments will collect data on lunar volatiles using different techniques,” Niles said. “Two instruments will provide perspectives on the radiological environment on the lunar surface, helping us better prepare to return crewed missions to the Moon. We will also learn information about the composition of the surface by evaluating its mineralogy. Later, NASA will send another suite of instruments to the top of the Gruithuisen domes.
As for scientific deliveries, Peregrine will also carry a payload for the Agencia Espacial Mexicana (AEM), the Mexican space agency. Its fleet of five mini rovers, each measuring just under 5 inches wide, will be the first Latin American scientific instruments to reach the surface of the Moon, according to Astrobotic. Carnegie Mellon University's 4-pound Iris rover is also hitching a ride on Peregrine, intending to take photos to send home. And the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is sending its M-42 radiation detector, intended to measure the amount of radiation a human being would be exposed to during a round-trip mission to the Moon.
Among non-science payloads, ULA's Vulcan Centaur and Peregrine will carry small portions of human remains for space memorial companies Celestis and Elysium Space. Celestis planned two separate commemorative destinations for the trip: one, ““, will land on the moon with Peregrine, while another, ““, will continue into deep space with the Centaur upper stage after it separates from the lunar lander. Flights like these that go beyond Earth's immediate vicinity start at just under $13,000, and potential customers have the option of sending token quantities of human ashes or DNA.
One of the luminaries whose DNA is headed to the lunar surface will be 2001: A Space Odyssey co-writer and science fiction author, Arthur C. Clarke. On the Enterprise flight are the remains of several key characters from the Star Trek franchise, including series creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, and their son Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, as well as Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura from the original series). ) and his son, Kyle Johnson. Elysium has been less open about who it will send the remains to.
The idea of turning the Moon into a memorial site has sparked negative reactions. Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren spoke out against the upcoming mission after hearing about the plan, calling it “tantamount to desecration” for the many cultures that view the moon as sacred. reported.
In response to questions posed by ReutersJoey Roulette, at NASA's briefing Thursday, members of the space agency repeatedly reiterated that the decision about which payloads to fly rests solely with Astrobotic. “They don’t need to clean these payloads with us,” said Chris Culbert, CLPS program manager. “These are real commercial missions. It's up to them to sell what they can sell.
The issue highlights one of the potential downsides of relying on contractors, and it will undoubtedly come up again as NASA relies more on commercial industry for its future missions. Although NASA may not be able to approve which payloads will be included alongside its own in commercial missions, Culbert added that the teams “obviously have a lot of discussions about how the payloads fit together.” “fit together”.
The rest of the are a mix of memorabilia and objects representing the Earth and the achievements of humanity. Astrobotic has teamed up with DHL to create a “moon box” of memorabilia that will fly with Peregrine, including items such as photographs, literature and even a piece of Mount Everest. Hungarian company Puli Space Technologies and British company SpaceBit are sending plaques to the lunar surface, while Japanese space company Astroscale has filled a “lunar dream capsule” with “185,872 messages from children around the world.”
In addition to his rover, Carnegie Mellon created what he calls the “first museum on the moon.” The University project, a small cylinder composed of four chambers containing “hundreds of images, poems, music, nano-objects, mechanisms and samples of the Earth”, will remain on the Peregrine lander where it can be appreciated by future visitors with other fixed objects on board. Likewise, Peregrine will wear the of Lunar Library 2, which he calls “an ultra-durable archive of humanity.” Wikipedia is there, along with other major collections of Earth information and human languages.
And there are two Bitcoin projects going to the moon with Peregrine because crypto is, apparently, unavoidable: a physical bitcoin engraved with its private key, from the Seychelles cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX; and the Bitcoin Magazine Genesis Plate from U.S.-based BTC Inc., which includes a copy of the first bitcoin block ever mined.
Once Peregrine reaches lunar orbit, it will stay there for a few weeks before attempting to land on the surface. This is expected to happen on February 23. Given that the United States hasn't landed a lander on the Moon since the days of the Apollo mission, this is a big deal. But it's a risky business. Regarding the moon landings, there were than those who succeed. “Landing on the Moon is extremely difficult,” Culbert said during the NASA briefing. “We recognize that success cannot be assured. »
Regardless, and its commercial partners intend to continue their efforts, and in a close manner. The Peregrine 1 mission will be followed in February by NASA's second CLPS mission, led by Intuitive Machines. After that, at least four more CLPS lunar launches are planned before the end of 2024.
This article was originally published on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/peregrine-mission-1-heralds-the-beginning-of-the-moons-commercialization-140038460.html?src=rss
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