Unproven Moon Landers will Prove Themselves in 2024
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Are you as excited for the new ULA Vulcan Centaur and Astrobotic Peregrine launch as I am? I’m scheduling this email to land in your inboxes midnight Eastern Time Monday because I will not be updating it at 2:18 AM, the scheduled launch time. ULA is highly incentivized to launch Vulcan successfully, but you never know. Plus that last-minute White House review of the Celestis payload carrying human remains to the Moon, prompted by Navajo Nation.
Too young to witness Apollo, I have been waiting my whole life for a return to the Moon. The possibility of lunar return is what motivated me to pursue lunar regolith (dirt/dust) dynamics for my doctoral research. A new era of lunar exploration has finally begun!
Whether the inaugural Vulcan launch is successful or not, whether Peregrine lands successfully or not, there’s no stopping this wave.
All the best,
Laura Forczyk, Executive Director
Background images credited to Astrobotic Technology and Intuitive Machines
Unproven Moon Landers will Prove Themselves in 2024
The year of the commercial Moon landers has been a long time coming. First, a bit of history to better understand why this moment is important, regardless of mission success.
The Background
2009
George W. Bush administration’s Moon-focused Constellation program was canceled with the transition to the Obama administration.
2012
Regolith and Environmental Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatiles Extraction (RESOLVE) was proposed.
2013
NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission was initiated.
2014 - 2016
NASA's Journey to Mars initiative was all the rage. #JourneyToMars
2014
RESOLVE morphed into Resource Prospector.
2017
Asteroid Redirect Mission was canceled with the transition from the Obama administration to the Trump administration.
Exploration Mission 1, 2, and 2 (later called Artemis I, II, and III) were established as an interim concept prior to the assignment of Jim Bridenstine as NASA administrator for the Trump administration.
2018
Resource Prospector was canceled so spread out the risk from one large mission to multiple lunar missions.
NASA established the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS, pronounced “clips”) program.
2019
Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER), a golf-cart-sized rover, was developed with the following instruments from Resource Prospector:
Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS)
Near InfraRed Volatiles Spectrometer System (NIRVSS)
One meter long core drill
2020
CLPS provider Astrobotic Technology was awarded the contract to carry VIPER on its Griffin lander, currently scheduled for Nov. 2024.
2024
January
Astrobotic's Peregrine is scheduled to launch on United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan Centaur rocket on January 8 carrying 20 payloads, including 5 NASA payloads:
Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System (NIRVSS)
Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS)
Peregrine Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS)
Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer
Laser Retroreflector Array
February
Intuitive Machines IM-1 with Nova-C lander is scheduled to launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 with 9 payloads, including 5 NASA payloads:
Laser Retro-Reflector Array (LRA)
Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing (NDL)
Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator (LN-1)
Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS)
Radio wave Observation at the Lunar Surface of the photoElectron Sheath (ROLSES)
Rest of 2024
Additional commercial missions are possible this year (although many may slip into 2025), including:
Astrobotic Griffin mission 1 (Nov. 2024)
Intuitive Machines IM-2 and IM-3
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost M1
ispace's Hakuto-R Mission 2
SpaceX's Starship HLS Demo Mission
The Risk
Five other NASA instruments originally manifested on Peregrine, but in 2023 were removed because of the risk of the untested lander.
In 2018 when Resource Prospector was canceled, Thomas Zurbuchen, then NASA associate administrator for science, said NASA was aiming to take “shots on goal.”
Steve Jurczyk (may he rest in peace), then NASA acting associate administrator, at a May 1, 2018 meeting of the National Academies’ Space Studies Board:
“[Zurbuchen] wants to have two ‘shots on goal’ every year starting in 2019. We want to challenge industry to develop the first landers to deliver some amount of kilograms of science instruments and exploration instruments to the surface of the moon in ’19, in ’20, in ’21, in ’22.”
“If we send two and one doesn’t make it or crash lands, that’s okay. We’ll learn from it, and then we’ll go fly again.”
Zurbuchen, speaking at that meeting on May 2, 2018:
“Our hope is to take one or two shots on goal every year. A reasonable expectation is a 50 percent success rate at the beginning. It’s not zero, and it’s not 100.”
“We’re not going to be discouraged if the first one doesn’t work.”
Astralytical Analysis
High chance at least one CLPS mission will land successfully on the Moon in 2024, but not all.
NASA and CLPS providers will learn from failures and quickly iterate.
Although the CLPS rapid cadence of two mission attempts per year has been delayed 5 years as it was envisioned in 2018, we may see an even more rapid cadence starting in 2024.
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