If the Tokyo-based ispace_inc M1 lander safely touches down on the moon this afternoon it will be the first commercial vessel ever to do so. After years of hype the commercial lunar market may finally be getting off the ground. 📷: Courtesy of Ispace
Soon, the Ispace lander will have plenty of company. Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic will be sending its Peregrine lander on the debut flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket, which could launch in June. Houston-based Intuitive Machines plans to send two Nova-C landers to the moon this year, with another slated for 2024. Other companies, like Firefly Aerospace and Draper, have their own landers heading there in the next couple years.
After years of hype, the commercial lunar market finally appears to be getting off the ground—and there seems to be enough customer demand for payload spots to keep the fledgling industry growing. For example, Astrobotic’s first lander will carry payloads from 16 clients. Among them are small robots from the Mexican space agency, a radiation detector from the German Aerospace Center, and Carnegie Mellon University’s MoonArk, an artistic project somewhat akin to the Golden Records.
“I think this is a signal of a strong market. I wish for success not only for our own missions but also for our competitors,” says Tim Crain, Intuitive Machines’s chief technology officer. Successful lunar missions could also eventually set the stage for commercial Martian landers, he says. Still, although there are a growing number of private clients for space shipping, the expanding market is significantly driven by NASA through itsprogram. About twice a year, NASA has been putting out calls for bids to deliver a science payload—or occasionally a technology development one—that it wants shipped to a specific lunar location by a certain date. Companies then bid on those transportation services.
NASA’s biggest CLPS contract by far, worth about $330 million, will involve bringing the agency’s Viper lunar rover to the moon’s south pole in November 2024. That job is going to Astrobotic’s Griffin, its successor to Peregrine and the largest lander of the bunch.
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