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

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

The companies involved – ispace in Tokyo and Firefly Aerospace in Cedar Park, Texas – are already celebrating. But every private Moon mission so far has gone awry, and scientists won’t rest until the probes’ research equipment is up and running. It won’t be for weeks or months in some cases.

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

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This is ispace’s second trip to 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 program that pays companies to fly the agency’s payloads to the Moon. The program’s first craft, which exploded in January 2024, tumbled out of control in space. A month later, the second landed safely on the Moon before toppling sideways.

The most recent missions launched on a single rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida; it is the first time that two private lunar spacecraft have been launched together. Both are mainly aimed at demonstrating technologies needed to land on the Moon. But they also carry a number 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 called 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 on the surface. The rover is intended to roll around and scoop up a sample of lunar debris using a shovel-like attachment. It is also supposed to place a small model of a red house on the surface of the moon, to symbolize humans extending 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 attempt to fly a payload into deep space, “and it’s a very significant development” in Taiwan’s space capabilities, said Loren Chang, a space scientist at National Central University in Taoyuan City, Taiwan, who is leading the project. The instrument is expected to turn on shortly after launch and to collect radiation data as the lander flies to the Moon. The information it collects can help protect the health of future astronauts.

Moon dust and dirt

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