2025 will be another big year for commercial moon missions
As soon as at the end of February, the lunar Lander will deviate from the NASA Kennedy Space Center on the way to the lunar instruments that could explore what is only below the surface. Only two months a year, this will be the third mission that has set off on the moon so far in 2025. If 2024. 2025 is the year of doubling. Well, unless it’s Trump And transfer the focus to Mars in the direction of Elon Musk, throwing away the entire timeline. But as it stands, this must be a year for the moon.
Last year, it started with the launch of Astrobotics Peregrine Lander, marking the first of several missions run by companies operating under multi -million -dollar contracts as part of the NASA Commercial Lunar Lunar Lunar Lunar Lunar Cargo Service Program. Peregrine eventually After undergoing a fuel leak after launching, but only a few weeks later, intuitive machines started and On the moon – first for a private spacecraft. (Odyssey But its useful loads were still able to collect and transmit some data).
Now, quickly forward to this year, and NASA has half a dozen CLPs missions on its schedule. The first, Mission 1 Mission 1 of FireSpace Aerospace, started on January 15th on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The same rocket also wore a lunar Lander made by the Japanese IPACE company that makes Endeavor, hakuto-r.
Firefly’s Lander is expected to arrive at the moon first, such as the target landing date on March 2 in an area called Mare Crisium. The 6.6-foot high spacecraft with solar energy brings 10 useful loads for NASA and other partners. This includes a new dust system to demonstrate how future missions can prevent particles from accumulating on spacecraft, testing tools and global navigation satellite -based navigation and radiation tolerance. “The goals of the mission are to examine the heat flow from the lunar interior, the interactions of the surface of the slag, (s) electric and magnetic fields of the bark,” according to NASA. “It will also take X -ray images of the earth’s magnetosphere.”
Sustainability, Lander ISPACE, accepts different, low energy And it won’t reach its site, Mare Frigoris, by the end of May or June. This craft has a Micro Rover, called Tenacious on board, which is intended to examine, collects surface materials and relay data. In addition to the camera and a shovel, Tenious has a tiny models mounted on it – more special.“From Swedish artist Michael Genberg. Lander carries water electrolyzer equipment, a deep space radiation probe and an experiment for food production. (And how we could forget, it also contains a commemorative alloy plate from the Bandai Namco Research Institute, made in the style of the Gundam franchise, The Universal Age Charter).
The intuitive machines, the company that withdrew the first ever landing at Commercial Moon with its craft in Odysseus, will be planned to launch its second CLPS mission next month or so, around the end of February. The IM-2 Nova-C Lander, called Athens, heads to the lunar south pole with a meter-length workout and a mass spectrometer for the NASA Polar Polar Resources Outdoor Outbound (Prime-1). Its purpose is to demonstrate the feasibility of drilling samples and to analyze these samples on the spot for things like water. It will also serve as a nasal path of NASA lunar path, a small orbital that will “study the shape, abundance and distribution of moon water and its connection to geology.”
In addition to Prime-1 tools, Athens will transport laser retrophic massif, intuitive Micro-Nova Hopper-Disposed as “a missed drone that is deployed by Nova-C laseet and jumps through the lunar surface” and lunar surface surface communication system A Nokia Network Made by Nokia. The two companies plan to create the first cellular network of the moon, which is “designed to cope with the surface connectivity between Lander and vehicles, carrying video streaming of video, communications and controls to control and control commands.”
There is a chance Blue Mark 1 Lunar Lander on Blue Moune to take his first trip to the moon right after this spring or summer. John Kuluris, Senior Vice President at Blue Origin, said in an interview with Last March, “We expect to land on the moon between 12 and 16 months of today.” At that time, the company had not yet released its new Glenn rocket – which would be the vehicle for this mission – even once, so this statement is not in Great weight. But after many, many delays, In mid -January.
NASA revealed in the FCC submission noted by Already in August, he chose Lander to Blue Origin to bring a camera for cameras, Slume Surface (SCalpSS), to the South Pole of the Moon this year under the CLPS program. The NASA submission notes that this should be done before 2025, as data collected from the landing instrument will help to inform the plans of the first landing of Moon Artemis Moon. SCALPSS’s field loads have flew to other CLPS missions, but the Blue Origin Lander thrust level is closer to the scale of the human landing system will use for astronauts.
Blue origin is said in another The same month that his demonstration lunar mission, Pathfinder, could start as early as March 2025, SpaceNews Reported. Do not be surprised if it actually happens much later.
The next CLPS mission is then expected to take off until the fall, when the astrobotic will receive another shot when landing on the moon. This time he will send his greater Griffin Lander to a region near the South Pole. Griffin Mission 1 was initially to wear NASA’s vocations, investigating Rover Polar Exploration Rover (Viper) but from this project at the end of last year due to delays and increasing costs. However, Astrobotic’s Lander will not appear to the moon with empty hands. He will have a tiny solar power supply cubic in tow, as well as a laser retroflector to determine the location of Lander.
We can see a third intuitive mission of machines before the end of this year. The company and NASA look at the end of 2025 or early 2026 to launch the IM-3, which will deliver a set of tools focused on studying the magnetic and plasma properties of the Reiner Gamma Moon Village, an area with its own “own” Mini-Magnetsphere. “Rover, called Mobile Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP), will also be on board, plus a trio of small rovers from the project for a joint autonomous robotic study (Cadre), which will demonstrate mainly autonomous robots working together. The European Laser Retoreflector of the European Space Agency will also fly with the IM-3, along with the monitor of the lunar space environment, from the Institute of Astronomy and Space Sciences in South Korea (KASI).
Although this year it is certain that it will bring a lot of activity to and around the moon, there is one thing we will still not see there – people. NASA corrects the chart of the artemis missions several times after the announcement of the program and In December that pressing the first crew flight, Artemis II, by April 2026, the agency earlier said it had fired for September 2025. Artemis III, the mission in which two astronauts will go to the moon’s surface is now expected be expected to start by mid -2027
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/2025-IS-Down-to-be-another-big-for-comercial-missions-16003862.html?sc RSS
English