(Bloomberg) -- SpaceX launched a pair of commercial satellites carrying lunar rovers as competition intensifies in the private sector’s race to the moon.
The Elon Musk-led company’s Falcon 9 rocket was carrying two probes when it took off early Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
One probe is from Texas-based Firefly Aerospace Inc. Its so-called Blue Ghost marks Firefly’s first foray into lunar exploration and the company will attempt a landing on the moon in about 45 days.
Sharing the rocket with Blue Ghost is the Hakuto-R probe from Tokyo-based Ispace Inc. It’s scheduled to reach the moon around the middle of the year if all goes well in what is the startup’s second attempt after getting frustratingly close to making history in 2023.
The Hakuto-R will take longer to get there because Ispace is taking a safer and less energy intensive route and aiming for a flatter landing spot on the moon’s surface this time around.
Ispace was able to establish communication with its probe, which was operating as planned, the company said Wednesday evening.
“We will make full use of the knowledge and experience gained in Mission 1 to prepare for the first orbit control maneuver scheduled in the near future,” Ispace chief executive officer Takeshi Hakamada said in a statement.
The expeditions are the latest in the commercial sector’s lunar contest after India in August 2023 became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole. Months later, in February 2024, Intuitive Machines Inc.’s lander became the first private spacecraft to reach the lunar surface, and got much closer to the south pole, where scientists are eager to solve the origin of the moon’s water.
Firefly, a contractor for NASA’s Artemis program that aims to return humans to the moon, secured a contact in December worth $179 million that will see it deliver six NASA payloads to the moon by 2028.
Blue Ghost will aim for a volcanic basin called the Sea of Crises, or Mare Crisium, while Ispace’s sights are set on a large, flat plain called Mare Frigoris — Sea of Cold — on the moon’s northern tip.
About 12 months ago, Japan landed its first-ever probe on the moon following a series of painful setbacks to the nation’s space ambitions.
That SLIM lander, nicknamed Moon Sniper, nearly became a lost cause after landing on a sloped hill that prevented sunlight from reaching its solar cells. Then, after enduring two weeks of subzero temperatures on the dark side of the moon, it was revived by the warmth of the sun and able to transmit vital data back to Earth.
(Updates with comments from Ispace after fifth paragraph. An earlier version corrected date of first Ispace mission.)
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