Two companies launch Moon missions together: will they make history?

A pair of spacecraft developed by private firms blast off on a single rocket on the risky voyage to the lunar surface

The Resilience lunar lander and Tenacious rover were launched to the Moon today.Credit: Toru Hanai/Bloomberg/Getty

Not one but two private firms each launched spacecraft to the Moon today — a sign of companies’ growing interest in lunar exploration, a risky enterprise long dominated by government agencies.

The firms involved — ispace of Tokyo, and Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas — are already celebrating. But every private Moon mission so far has gone awry, and scientists will not rest easy until the research gear on the probes is up and running. That will not be for weeks or months in some cases.

“It was a fantastic launch,” said Nicola Fox, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington, DC. “We learn with every single mission that we do.”

This is ispace’s second go at the Moon: in 2023, an ispace lander crashed into the lunar surface. The Firefly launch is the company’s first to the Moon, but it is the third mission sponsored by a NASA programme paying companies to fly agency payloads to the Moon. The programme’s first craft, which blasted off in January 2024, tumbled out of control in space. A month later, the second touched down safely on the Moon before toppling sideways.

The latest missions launched on a single rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida; it is the first time that two private lunar spacecraft have launched together. Both are aiming mainly to demonstrate technologies needed to land on the Moon. But they also carry a range of scientific payloads, including instruments to measure space radiation and to study Earth’s magnetic environment.

Try, try again

The ispace lander, called Resilience, is headed for a plain named Mare Frigoris, or Sea of Cold, at a latitude of about 60º north on the Moon’s near side. It will take several months to get there but, if it lands successfully, it will deploy a small rover onto the surface. The rover is meant to roll around and scoop a sample of lunar dirt using a shovel-like attachment. It is also supposed to place a small model of a red house on the lunar surface, to symbolize humans expanding their lives into space.

Other payloads include commercial experiments exploring how to develop water and food production on the Moon, as well as an instrument to measure radiation levels. The latter is Taiwan’s first effort to fly a payload into deep space, “and so is a very significant development” in Taiwan’s space capacity, says Loren Chang, a space scientist at National Central University in Taoyuan City, Taiwan, who leads the project. The instrument is expected to power up soon after launch, and to gather radiation data as the lander flies to the Moon. The information it collects could help to protect the health of future astronauts.

Moondust and dirt

Meanwhile, the Firefly lander, called Ghost Riders in the Sky, is heading for the lunar plain known as Mare Crisium, or Sea of Crises, closer to the equator than ispace’s target. It will take around 45 days to arrive. The landing site was chosen to avoid magnetic anomalies on the lunar surface that could interfere with observations, says Ryan Watkins, a programme scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington DC.