Two lunar landers built by private companies in the United States and Japan left Earth aboard a SpaceX rocket as part of a lunar mission.
Falcon 9 took off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:09 a.m. (local time) on Wednesday, carrying landers from Firefly Aerospace of the United States and iSpace of Japan.
Once the lander reaches lunar orbit, it will eventually separate to conduct independent exploration.
It is the latest in a growing number of commercial missions to the Moon.
Firefly’s rover, Blue Space, is expected to take about 45 days to reach the moon after separating from its SpaceX rocket.
According to SpaceX, they will then drill, collect samples, and take X-ray images of Earth’s magnetic field to “advance research for future human missions to the Moon and provide insight into how space weather affects Earth.” I will do it.
Meanwhile, iSpace’s Resilence lander is expected to take up to five months to reach the lunar surface. There, it will deploy an exploration rover and attempt to scoop up loose surface material known as regolith.
NASA is supporting this effort, which, if successful, would be the largest commercial delivery to the Moon to date.
Intuitive Machines last year The first commercial device to land a lunar moduleThis is a feat previously achieved only by the United States, the Soviet Union, China, India, and Japan.
Separately, SpaceX is also conducting the seventh orbital flight test of its Starship rocket, which is scheduled to lift off from Texas at 16:00 local time (22:00 GMT).
