Cape Canavaveral, Fla. (AP) – Another private American company took a shot on Moon on Thursday, launched a month later when a rival’s lunar lander recalled his mark and crashed back.
NASA, the main sponsor with experiments on the board, expecting a successful moon landing next week as it wants to jump the lunar economy ahead of astronaut missions.
SpaceX’s Falcon rocket exploded from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to the night, which sent a lunar lander of spontaneous machines on the way of the moon, 230,000 miles (370,000 km) away. The lander was similar to a stunning six-point star Jewel-each point like one leg-like it successfully separated from the upper stage and closed in black void with blue earth below.
If all goes well, a touchdown effort will be on 22 February, after a day in the lunar orbit.
Only five countries – America, Russia, China, India and Japan – have made a lunar landing and no private business has done so yet. The US has not returned to the surface of the moon as the Apollo program ended over five decades ago.
“The nights prepared for this have been a lot of nights,” co-founder and CEO Steve Altemus, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Inteautive Machies.
The Houst-based company aims to keep its 14-foot (4.3-meter) long, six-foot lander only 186 miles (300 kilometers) below the moon’s south pole, equivalent to landing within Antarctica on Earth. The region – filled with treacherous craters and rocks, is still rich in potentially frozen water – where NASA has planned to unload astronauts after this decade. The space agency said that six navigation and technical experiments on the lander can easily help smoothly.
NASA’s first entry into its commercial lunar distribution service – Peregreen Lander of Astrobotic Technology – stumbled immediately after the liftoff in early January. A broken fuel tank and massive leakage motivated the spacecraft to bypass and launch, break and tear back through the atmosphere 10 days after burning on the Pacific.
Others made it on the moon before ruining it.
In 2019, an Israeli non -profit lander crashed. Last year, a Tokyo company saw its lander in the moon, followed by Russia’s accident.
Only the US has sent the moon to the moon with the closure of the program in December 1972 with Jean Cernnan and Harrison Schmidt of Apollo 17. This was for the American Moon Landing until the short -term effort of astrobotic last month.
Machines with intuitive knowledge named their lander after Homer’s hero in “The Odyssey”.
Trent Martin, vice -president of the space system, said, “Godspeed, Odisius. Now let’s make history.”
NASA is paying $ 118 million spontaneous machines to get the latest set of experiments for the moon. The company also drums its own customers, including Columbia Sportswear, testing a metal jacket fabric as a thermal insulator on the lander, and sculptor Jeff Cons, who is sending a 125-inch-lake sculpture to a C-Through Cube.
The lander is also carrying the Eglecam of Embri-Ridel Aeronautical University, which will take pictures of the lander as they both descend.
The spacecraft will stop operating after a week on the surface.
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