- Intuitive Machines, Firefly Aerospace, and ispace are all on their way to attempt a moon landing.
- Three private missions at once is notable, and it’s just the beginning of the moon opening for business.
- Here’s why three companies are flying to the moon right now.
Three companies are flying missions to land on the moon right now, in the early stages of a mad dash for lunar wealth.
The moon may not be Mars-obsessed Elon Musk’s favorite space destination, but many other entrepreneurs see it as an untapped economic opportunity.
That’s why two Texas-based companies and one Japanese firm are flocking to the moon this month.
All three missions were launched aboard SpaceX rockets.
Business Wire/AP
None of them are carrying human crews, but they all lay the groundwork for more complex operations in the future as the moon opens for business.
Intuitive Machines wants to mine the moon
The Texas-based company Intuitive Machines launched its second moon-landing mission, called IM-2, on Wednesday.
The company became the first commercial enterprise to land on the moon a year ago, but the new mission is taking its ambitions further. The mission includes a rover and a hopper, which carry experimental technology for GPS on the moon and a small drill to test the technology needed to one day mine minerals and ice beneath the lunar surface.
NASA via AP
Water ice on the moon could be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel, while minerals like titanium or rare earth elements used in smartphones and computers could be sold back on Earth.
“The whole package of this mission is about prospecting,” Steve Altemus, the CEO of Intuitive Machines, told Business Insider in December.
He added that eventually, he hopes to mine rare materials on the moon and bring them back to Earth.
Firefly Aerospace is testing lunar dust for NASA
For now, Intuitive Machines is the only company to ever successfully land softly (that is, without crashing) on the moon. Another Texas company, Firefly Aerospace, is gunning for second place this weekend.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost mission is set to attempt its first moon landing on Sunday.
Firefly Aerospace
“I think a lot of us will be holding our breath, you know, lighting a candle,” Ray Allensworth, the director of Firefly’s spacecraft program, told BI.
If Blue Ghost succeeds, it will run experiments on the lunar surface for about two weeks, which is a full lunar day.
All in all, the spacecraft is carrying 10 payloads for NASA, mainly focusing on “what the surface of the moon looks like or feels like, trying to figure out the impacts of the regolith, how the dust interacts with materials, the temperatures under the surface, stuff like that,” Allensworth said.
Japan’s ispace wants people to live on the moon
Both Texas companies’ moon landers are funded in part through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.
The third mission en route to the moon, though, is from the Japanese company ispace.
The company’s Hakuto-R spacecraft previously tried to land on the moon in 2023, but ispace reported that the lander had miscalculated its altitude when it detected an unexpected crater rim on the lunar surface, causing it to plummet and crash.
Ispace is trying again with a new mission carrying a lander and a micro-rover. The mission, called M2, launched aboard the same Falcon 9 rocket as the Firefly Blue Ghost spacecraft on January 15. M2 is taking a more leisurely route to the moon, though, with its landing set for May or June. The new lander is named RESILIENCE.
Business Wire/AP
Ispace touts a future where the moon and its water resources support “construction, energy, steel procurement, communications, transportation, agriculture, medicine, and tourism.”
The ispace website also advocates for permanent human residence on the moon, saying that “by 2040 the moon will support a population of 1,000, with 10,000 people visiting every year.”
It’s going to take a lot more moon missions to bring that vision to life. For now, for all three missions, just sticking the landing would be a huge achievement.
