The US space and aviation agency NASA decided to launch its new mission to the moon, called “Peregrine,” on December 24, and that it will land on the moon’s surface during the last week of December 2024, for the first time in about half a century.
Peregrine’s mission
The Peregrine mission was developed by the American company Astrobotic, which aimed to reduce costs to the point that several years ago it received a $79.5 million contract to deliver 14 NASA payloads to the moon.
The current mission carries about 10 payloads of various types, all weighing about 90 kg, and will include tools sent by NASA to study the lunar environment, especially the outer atmosphere of the Moon, the thermal properties of the lunar regolith and the abundance of hydrogen in it, and the Moon’s magnetic field.
The experiments that the mission will conduct will be affiliated with NASA, except for one, which is the radiation detector, which is affiliated with German research teams. These detectors will accurately measure the level of radiation that the human body will encounter on a trip to the moon and back.
All of these scientific missions come as side steps to serve NASA’s manned Artemis missions, which will be launched successively over the next few years with the aim of putting humans on the moon again, and this is expected to happen in December 2024.
The private sector in space
If the mission succeeds in achieving its goals, Astrobotic will be the first private company to be able to land a vehicle on the surface of the moon in history, and it is expected that with the success of the mission, the United States will continue to contract with the same company to transfer a number of tools to the moon before the American astronauts arrive there. .
This comes in the context of NASA shifting towards private companies in developing a number of missions. In fact, this entire version will be managed by private companies, as the mission itself is affiliated with the Astrobotic company, while the mission will be launched on a rocket belonging to the American company SpaceX.
The matter even extends beyond that, as a series of problems have emerged in recent years on the International Space Station, and it has become clear that it will go out of operation soon. NASA has already begun its plans to build a new space station, but unlike the previous station, The private sector will contribute strongly this time.
The agency reached an agreement with the company “Axiom Space” late last year to send a unit of its space station to connect it to the International Space Station as an initial experiment, and NASA also awarded contracts to develop commercial space stations with a total value of $415.6 million to Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin, among other things. Other companies.
