The Borneo Post

US to launch next Moon mission on Valentine’s Day

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WASHINGTON: US companies are set to launch for the Moon on Feb 14, less than a month since a similar mission ended in failure with the spaceship burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere, Nasa said.

The upcoming attempt features a lander built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines fixed to the top of a SpaceX rocket, while the last try involved a United Launch Alliance rocket and Astrobotic­s lander.

But the stakes remain just as high: achieving America’s first soft touchdown on the lunar surface since the end of the Apollo-era five decades ago, and the first ever by private industry.

SpaceX is targeting a 12.57am (0557 GMT) blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander expected to land on the Moon on Feb 22, at an impact crater near the lunar south pole.

Nasa paid Intuitive Machines more than US$100 million to ship its scientific hardware on the mission, part of a broader strategy to stimulate a lunar economy and delegate routine cargo missions to the private sector.

The ‘Nova-C’ lander’s payload includes instrument­s to better understand the lunar environmen­t as Nasa prepares to send human crew members back to the celestial body under the Artemis programme later this decade.

It also includes more colourful cargo, including sculptures by the artist Jeff Koons.

Only five nations have achieved soft lunar landings. The Soviet Union was first, followed by the United States, which is still the only country to put people on the Moon. China achieved the feat three times in the past decade, followed by India, and most recently Japan.

Japan’s lander touched down on Jan 20 but ended up on its side, leaving its solar panels off kilter.

Astrobotic’s failure was the third botched effort by nongovernm­ent missions, after an Israeli nonprofit and Japanese company both crash-landed in 2019 and 2023, respective­ly.

Landing on the Moon is complicate­d by treacherou­s terrain and the lack of atmosphere, which means parachutes aren’t an option and a spaceship has to use its thrusters to achieve a controlled descent. — AFP

 ?? — AFP photo ?? Photo shows the Nova-C lunar lander encapsulat­ed within the fairing of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in preparatio­n for launch, as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign in Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
— AFP photo Photo shows the Nova-C lunar lander encapsulat­ed within the fairing of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in preparatio­n for launch, as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign in Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

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