The era of the moon exploration of private companies

Discovering the Moon is going through a revolutionary moment. Within 6 weeks, 3 different moon landing ships began the journey to fly into space with rocket to learn more about the closest neighbors of the Earth. All three amphibious ships operate by relatively new private companies. It was a significant change compared to the discovery of the universe in the 20th century, which was dominated by state agencies like NASA. If they complete the task, they can pave the way for many moon missions with future drivers, even develop the moon economy in a short time, according to Popular Science.

Currently, 3 amphibious ships are in the moon orbits or flying to this object. The first two amphibious ships, one of the Firefly Aerospace Company in Texas and the other ship of Japanese company ISPACE launched at the same time on January 15 on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Rocket. Finally, the Nova-C spacecraft nicknamed “Athena” of Intuitive Machines took off from NASA’s Kennedy space center on the evening of February 26. Intuitive Machines had been in history last year when he became the first private company to successfully land on the surface of the Moon. However, the problem in the landing process caused the ship to fall to one side.

Intuitive Machines will search for water and check the first Moon Mobile network

Intuitive Machines’s Athena amphibious Athena is on the way to the moon after successfully launching in the middle of this week. It is expected that the ship is on March 6 on a plateau near the southernmost pole of the Moon if it is planned. After landing, Athena will have a busy schedule. The basic objective of the amphibious ship is to collect specimens in the area where scientists think that can store water. Athena is equipped with a drill that can drill 10 cm/time until the target depth is one meter. In total, the ship is expected to spend 10 days on the moon surface.

But Athena was not alone in the journey. Located inside the amphibious ship is a small drone called “Micro Nova Hopper”, according to American computer scientist Grace Murray Hopper. Drone Hopper will fly up himself and leave Athena, finally landing in a rugged deep pit in the dark. Like amphibious ships, Hopper will search for signs of water bandages. Athena also deployed a small 4 -wheel self -propelled robot developed by Lunar Outpost, used to test the first Moon mobile network from Nokia.

Blue Ghost amphibious surface moon surface exploration

Despite the launch later than a month, Athena will land on the moon just a few days after the Blue Ghost ship of Firefly Aerospace. As one of the two ships launched in January, Blue Ghost entered the Moon orbit on February 12 and prepared to land on March 2 on the edge of the moon nearby. As part of Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), Blue Ghost will act as a means of transporting 10 NASA scientific and technological equipment. After landing, the ship will operate for about two weeks, collecting data about the soil layer near the surface including dust, scrap and mineral pieces.

Blue Ghost made many important contributions before landing. Earlier this week, Firefly Aerospace shared a series of videos and photos of amphibious amphibious ships revealing the close -up image of the moon. The scene of 119 km from the surface is among the most obvious examples of the area that cannot be observed from the Earth.

Ispace tries to “redeem” with the Resilience

The third moon landing ship at the same time as Blue Ghost was operated by ISpace in Tokyo. Unlike the other two companies, ISpace is seeking to “redeem”. The company once brought the ship to the moon in 2023 but a software problem caused the ship to have problems and fell quickly at an altitude of 4.8 km before crashing down the Moon’s surface. The new ship called “Resilience” is on the way to the moon, expected to arrive in May or early June. If Resilience can successfully land, the plan is to deploy self -propelled robots weighing nearly 5 kg to collect and analyze the dust sample. The amphibious ship also carries many different scientific devices including water electrolytes and spacecraft radioactive exploration devices.

The private sector is dominating the universe

The achievements of the moon landing ships in the past month have been the result after decades of efforts to shift from major government organizations to more competitive private markets. Famous missile manufacturers such as SpaceX and Blue Origin are the biggest beneficiaries from this change, but many startups are focusing on everything from short -range space and missiles to a luxury space. Cooperating with private companies allows agencies such as NASA to bring equipment into space faster and cheaper if in charge of all aspects of the mission.

However, conversion to the private sector also has some potential limitations. Critics warn profits in new companies that can make them prioritize intermediaries easier to make money such as tourism or industrial mining instead of scientific exploration. They are also concerned that some business models targeting profits will find ways to maximize values ​​as quickly as possible, thus prioritizing speed instead of the safety of equipment or crew in the future.