CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (NEWsnet/AP) — China and India have scored moon landings. Russia, Japan and Israel entered the lunar trash heap.
Now, two private companies are hustling to get the U.S. back in the game, more than five decades after the Apollo program ended.
It’s part of a NASA-supported effort to kick-start commercial moon deliveries.
“They’re scouts going to the moon ahead of us,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology is up first, with a planned liftoff of a lander Jan. 8 aboard United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan. Houston’s Intuitive Machines aims to launch a lander in mid-February, hopping a flight with SpaceX.
Japan will attempt to land in two weeks. Japan’s space agency lander, with two toy-size rovers, had a big head start, sharing a September launch with an X-ray telescope that stayed behind in orbit around Earth.
If successful, Japan will become the fifth country to complete a lunar landing. Russia and the U.S. did it repeatedly in the 1960s and 70s. China has landed three times within the past decade, including on the moon’s far side, and plans another flight in 2024 to collect lunar samples. India made the trip in summer 2023.
United States is the only nation to put astronauts on the moon.
The U.S. has not attempted a moon landing since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt explored the lunar surface in December 1972.
Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are looking to end the country’s moon-landing drought, and vying for bragging rights as the first private entity to land on the moon.
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