SpaceX launches U.S and Japanese landers to the moon

In a two-for-one moonshot, SpaceX launched a pair of lunar landers Wednesday for U.S. and Japanese companies looking to jump-start business on Earth’s dusty sidekick.

The two landers rocketed away in the middle of the night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the latest in a stream of private spacecraft aiming for the moon. They shared the ride to save money but parted company an hour into the flight exactly as planned, taking separate roundabout routes for the monthslong journey.

It’s take 2 for the Tokyo-based ispace, whose first lander crashed into the moon two years ago. This time, it has a rover on board with a scoop to gather up lunar dirt for study and plans to test potential food and water sources for future explorers.

Lunar newcomer Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is flying 10 experiments for NASA, including a vacuum to gather dirt, a drill to measure the temperature below the surface, and a device that could be used by future moonwalkers to keep the sharp, abrasive particles off their space suits and equipment.

Firefly’s Blue Ghost—named after a species of U.S. Southeastern fireflies—should reach the moon first. The 6-foot-6-inches-tall (2-meter-tall) lander will attempt a touchdown in early March at Mare Crisium, a volcanic plain in the northern latitudes.

The slightly bigger ispace lander named Resilience will take four to five months to get there, targeting a touchdown in late May or early June at Mare Frigoris, even farther north on the moon’s near side.

“We don’t think this is a race. Some people say ‘race to the moon,’ but it’s not about the speed,” ispace’s founder CEO Takeshi Hakamada said this week from Cape Canaveral.

Both Hakamada and Firefly CEO Jason Kim acknowledge the challenges still ahead, given the wreckage littering the lunar landscape. Only five countries have successfully placed spacecraft on the moon since the 1960s: the former Soviet Union, the U.S., China, India, and Japan.

“We’ve done everything we can on the design and the engineering,” Kim said. Even so, he pinned an Irish shamrock to his jacket lapel Tuesday night for good luck.

The U.S. remains the only one to have landed astronauts. NASA’s Artemis program, the successor to Apollo, aims to get astronauts back on the moon by the end of the decade.

Before that can happen, “we’re sending a lot of science and a lot of technology ahead of time to prepare for that,” NASA’s science mission chief Nicky Fox said on the eve of launch.

If acing their respective touchdowns, both spacecraft will spend two weeks operating in constant daylight, shutting down once darkness hits.

Once lowered onto the lunar surface, ispace’s 11-pound (5-kilogram) rover will stay near the lander, traveling up to hundreds of yards (meters) in circles at a speed of less than one inch (a couple centimeters) per second. The rover has its own special delivery to drop off on the lunar dust: a toy-size red house designed by a Swedish artist.

NASA is paying $101 million to Firefly for the mission and another $44 million for the experiments. Hakamada declined to divulge the cost of ispace’s rebooted mission with six experiments, saying it’s less than the first mission that topped $100 million.

Coming up by the end of February is the second moonshot for NASA by Houston-based Intuitive Machines. Last year, the company achieved the first U.S. lunar touchdown in more than a half-century, landing sideways near the south pole but still managing to operate.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

—Marcia Dunn, AP Aerospace Writer

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