As soon as the end of February, a lunar will share from the Kennedy space center of NASA on its way to the moon by carrying instruments which could investigate what is just below the surface. Barely two months after the start of the year, it will be the third mission to have participated in a trip to the moon so far in 2025. If 2024 was all about 2025 is the year to double. Well, unless Trump And move attention to Mars under the direction of Elon Musk, throwing the whole chronology. But as it stands, it should be a busy year for the moon.
Last year, began with the launch of pregrine Lander of Astrobotics, marking the first of several missions led by companies working within the framework of the several million dollars contracts as part of the useful charges for useful charges of payload of NASA (Clps). Peregrine finally After having undergone a propellant leak after the launch, but only a few weeks later, intuitive machines were launched and On the Moon – a first for a private spacecraft. (Ulysses But its useful expenses were always able to collect and transmit certain data).
Now, avant-garde this year, and NASA has half a dozen CLPS missions on its calendar. The first of them, Blue Ghost Mission 1 of Firefly Aerospace, was launched on January 15 on a SpaceX Falcon 9. This same rocket also wore the lunar made by the Japanese company Ispace, which Endeavour, Hakuto-R.
The Firefly, Blue Ghost, should arrive at the moon first, with a target landing date of March 2 in an area called Mare Crisium. The 6.6 -foot sun spaceship offers 10 useful scientific charges for NASA and other partners. This includes a new dust shield system to demonstrate how future missions could prevent particles from accumulating on spaceships, instruments to test the collection of samples and navigation based on the satellite navigation system (GNSS) and a computer tolerant of radiation. “The objectives of the mission are to study the heat flow of the lunar interior, the panache-surface interactions, [and] Crustal Electric and Magnetic Fields ”, according to NASA. “You will also need X -ray images of the Earth’s magnetosphere.”
Resilience, land And will not reach his site, mare fridge, until the end of May or June. This job has a micro-road called tenacious on board which is designed to explore, collect surface materials and relay data. In addition to a camera and a shovel, tenacious has a small model house mounted on it – especially the ““, By the Swedish artist Mikael Genberg. The landing carries water electrolyzer equipment, a deep space radiation probe and a food production experience module. (And how could we forget, it also contains a commemorative alloy plate of the Bandai Namco research institute made in the style of the “Charter of the universal century” of the Gundam franchise).
Intuitive machines, the company which succeeded in the very first landing of the commercial moon with its crafts Ulysses last year, is expected to launch its second mission CLPS in next month, towards the end of February. The Argena IM-2 NOVA-C nicknamed Athena goes to the southern pole of the Lunar with a meter forest and a mass spectrometer for the ice exploration experience of the NASA polar resources (Prime-1). Its objective is to demonstrate the feasibility of drilling for samples and to analyze these samples on site for things like water. Will also be a carpool for the lunar pioneer of NASA, a small orbiter who “will study the form, abundance and distribution of lunar water and his relationship with geology”.
In addition to the Prime-1 instruments, Athena will carry a network of laser retroreflector, a micro-nova hopper of intuitive machines-described as “a propulsive drone which unfolds from a Nova-C and Houblon through the lunar surface”- And a lunar surface area “network in a box” made by Nokia. The two companies plan to set up the first cellular network of the Moon, which is “designed to manage surface connectivity between the landing and vehicles, transporting high -definition video communication data, command communications and control and telemetry ”.
There is a chance Lander Lunar Blue Moon Mark 1 from Blue Origin will make his first trip to the Moon from this spring or this summer. John COULURIS, a main vice-president of Blue Origin, said in an interview with Last March, “we expect to land on the moon between 12 and 16 months from today”. At the time, the company had not yet launched its new Glenn rocket – which would be the vehicle of this mission – even once, so that this assertion did not have much weight. But after many, a lot of delays, in mid-January.
NASA revealed, in an FCC file spotted by In August, that he had selected Blue Origin from the landing to bring a camera system, the stereo cameras for surface studies of the lunar plume (comrade), at the southern pole of the moon this year in the Clps program. In the file, NASA notes that this must be done before the end of 2025, because the data collected by the landing instrument will help to light the plans for the first landing of Artemis Moon Landing. The useful loads of scalps have stolen from other CLPS missions, but the level of push of Blue Origin Mark 1 Lander is closer to the scale of the human landing system will be used for astronauts.
Blue Origin said in another The same month as his lunar demonstration mission, Pathfinder, could be launched in March 2025, SpaceNews reported. Do not be surprised if it happens much later.
The next Mission CLPS after that should not take off before the fall, when the astroobotics will have another stroke of landing on the moon. This time, he will send his largest Griffin Lander in a region near the South Pole. Griffin Mission 1 was initially supposed to transport the volatiles of the NASA investigating the Polar Exploration Rover (Viper), but From this project at the end of last year due to delays and the cost increase. Astrobotic Landder will not show up on the moon, empty hand, however. He will have a tiny solar energy Cuberover in a trailer, as well as a network of laser retro -retroreflector to identify the location of the landing.
We can see a third mission of intuitive machines before the end of this year. The company and NASA envisaged at the end of 2025 or at the beginning of 2026 for the launch of the IM-3, which will offer a series of instruments focused on the study of the magnetic and plastic properties of the Gamma Lunar Swirl, a Zone with its own “mini-magnetosphere. “A rover called the mobile autonomous autonomous prospecting platform (MAPP) will also be on board, plus a trio of small rivers of the distributed robotic cooperative project (frame) which will mainly demonstrate autonomous robots working together. The Moonlight Retoreflect laser The European Space Agency will also fly with IM-3, as well as the Lunar Space Environment Monitor, Korea of Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) in South Korea.
Although this year is sure to bring a lot of activities on and around the Moon, there is one thing that we will not see yet – humans. NASA has adjusted the chronology of Artemis missions several times since the program announces, and In December, he pushed the first crew flight, Artemis II, until April 2026. The agency previously declared that it was running for September 2025. Artemis III, the mission in which two astronauts will go to the lunar surface, is not supposed to be supposed to be supposed to launch until mid-2027.
This article originally appeared on HTTPS://www.engadget.com/Science/Space/2025-is-Ging-To-Be-Another-Big-For-for–MomonRCIAL-MOON-MISS-600386222 .html? src = rss
