Two private Moon landings for early 2024
Two private Moon landings are planned for the first weeks of 2024.
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) from iSpace is set to land on the lunar surface on January 20th, while a system from Astrobotic is due to land a few weeks later.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) launched the iSpace lander back in September, and it entered an elliptical orbit on Christmas Day ready for the landing. The lander, named RESILIENCE, carries a micro-rover developed by iSpace Europe (both shown above).
At the same time the US Artemis programme will send a lander developed by Astrobotic to the Moon aiming to land in early February.
The iSpace SLIM aims to achieve a pinpoint landing with an accuracy of less than 100 meters. This marks an unprecedentedly high-precision landing on a gravitational body such as the Moon and follows a failed mission last year.
“Around this time last year, we confirmed that ispace’s “HAKUTO-R” Mission 1 lunar lander had cruised stably in deep space for one month after its launch,” said Takeshi Hakamada, Founder and CEO of ispace. “Achieving Success 1 through Success 8 of the Mission 1 Milestones demonstrated the feasibility of a lunar mission by a private company and impressed the world with the possibilities for the future. The results of the mission are now available to the world.”
In parallel with Mission 2, ispace US will continue to develop its APEX 1.0 lander for Mission 3, as a member of Team Draper for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). This will transport three scientific payloads into lunar orbit and to the polar regions on the far side of the Moon.
“This year is also a year of new challenges as we make multiple preparations for Mission 2 to Mission 6 in parallel, but we will continue to boldly take on new challenges and devote ourselves to them without being bound by conventional wisdom,” said Hakamada.
NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis programme will see United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Astrobotic targeting a launch later this week for the first commercial robotic launch to the Moon’s surface. ULA’s Vulcan rocket will carry the Astrobotic Peregrine lunar lander, aiming to land on Friday, Feb. 23.
Astrobotic used the topology optimization capabilities in Ansys design tools to help design a lander with mass savings of up to 20% while meeting structural durability criteria. Ansys Mechanical helped evaluate performance under extreme structural loads during the launch and transit, and the impact of shock, vibration, and fluid transients during powered descent while Astrobotic engineers used Ansys Discovery to mature the design for stress, reduce mass, and optimize Peregrine for assembly.
Using Ansys Thermal Desktop, Astrobotic analyzed the complex cislunar orbit and trajectory options across diverse thermal environments and spacecraft altitudes. This enabled the mission planning team to determine the most suitable launch and landing opportunities.
The integrity of the antenna and radio signal are critical for communications and orbit trajectory tracking and Astrobotic used Ansys HFSS to design the antenna radiation patterns to ensure maximum signal strength.
“Ansys solutions helped us design and validate an innovative lander within a strict mission timeline that a manual approach would not have met,” said Sharad Bhaskaran, mission director at Astrobotic.
“Peregrine is poised to be one of the first US spacecraft to land on the Moon since Apollo, so we put it through rigorous testing to ensure it has the durability to withstand extreme cislunar conditions. With expert engineering guidance from SimuTech and Space Exploration Engineering, we are confident the Peregrine is ready to pave the way for the future of lunar operations.”
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