US Eyes First Moon Landings Since Apollo Missions With Help From Two Companies

The United States is planning to conduct its first moon landings since the Apollo missions as other nations have achieved major milestones in the space race.

China and India have already successfully landed spacecraft on the moon while Israel, Japan, and Russia failed, and their vessels crashed on the lunar surface. America is now getting help from two companies to put the United States back in the space game.

US Eyes First Moon Landings Since Apollo Missions

The latest efforts come five decades after the Apollo program ended and are part of a NASA-supported attempt to kick-start commercial moon deliveries. This also comes as the American space agency is focusing on getting astronauts back to the lunar surface.

In a statement, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that the two companies who will attempt moon landings will be the scouts going to the lunar surface ahead of the space agency. The first company, Pittsburgh's Astrobotic Technology, has a planned liftoff for Monday.

The firm will use a brand new rocket, the United Launch Alliance's Vulcan, to attempt the critical space mission. The second company is Houston's Intuitive Machines which seeks to launch a lander on the moon in mid-February, hopping onboard a flight with Elon Musk's SpaceX, as per Fox5Vegas.

Similarly, Japan will attempt another moon landing in two weeks' time, with the Japanese Space Agency's lander having two toy-size rovers. They had a big head start compared to the American firms, sharing a September launch with an X-ray telescope that stayed behind in orbit around our planet.

If the Japanese mission is successful, it would become the fifth country to pull off a lunar landing. Russia and the U.S. did so many times in the 1960s and 1970s. On the other hand, China has landed three times on the moon in the past decade, including on the far side of the moon.

International Space Race

Despite all of these accomplishments, the United States is so far the only country that has put astronauts on the moon. Landing on the lunar surface without wrecking is a difficult task as there is hardly any atmosphere to slow a spacecraft down when it approaches.

Obviously, parachutes will not work, which means that a lander must descend slowly using its thrusters while also navigating past dangerous cliffs and craters, according to the Associated Press.

Ispace, a Japanese millionaire's company, saw its lander smash into the lunar surface last April and was followed by Russia's incident in August. A few days after the latter, India successfully landed on the moon without incident near the south polar region. The mission marked the country's second attempt after the first one in 2019 crashed.

For the U.S., Astrobotic Technology's mission involving its Peregrine Mission One is a nail-biter for several reasons. It would also be carrying a variety of NASA and commercial payloads during its flight to the moon.

The lander is set to take off on Jan. 8 and land on the moon in late February at Sinus Viscositatis (Bay of Stickiness). This area is located adjacent to the Gruitheisen Domes, said Space.