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Recent years have signified the dawn of a renewed race to the moon, featuring various robotic spacecraft from different nations attempting — and largely failing — to land on the lunar surface and accomplish their designated tasks.
However, 2025 may present a new opportunity for the organizations and nations behind those failed missions, as well as introduce some fresh competitors to the arena.
January will commence with the simultaneous launch of two lunar landers: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is set to transport devices crafted by Firefly Aerospace from Cedar Park, Texas, and Ispace from Tokyo.
Firefly will undertake its inaugural effort to deploy a craft on the moon, while this mission represents a second opportunity for Ispace, following its initial lander’s crash which left a mark on the lunar terrain in 2023.
Furthermore, these two landers are merely a fraction of the uncrewed endeavors aiming to touch down on the lunar landscape — or seek vindication — in the upcoming months.
This year exhibits the potential to be among the most exciting yet in humanity’s revived initiative to scrutinize the moon, with the United States and its partners, along with China, striving to dispatch machines to the lunar landscape. Numerous robotic missions are set to lay the groundwork for astronauts’ return to the moon, as NASA intends to do as early as 2027.
Below is a preview of some of the lunar missions on the horizon.
This week: Firefly and Ispace are on double duty
The Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX, which is designated to launch the landers for both Firefly and Ispace, is anticipated to take off as early as 1:11 a.m. ET on Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center located in Florida.
If everything proceeds as anticipated, Firefly’s lander, known as Blue Ghost, will spend around 45 days gradually approaching its lunar target situated near Mons Latreille, an ancient volcanic structure within a basin exceeding 300 miles (483 kilometers) wide referred to as Mare Crisium, or the “Sea of Crises,” located on the moon’s near side.
“Mare Crisium was formed by early volcanic eruptions and inundated with basaltic lava over 3 billion years ago,” as per Firefly. “This distinctive landing site will enable our payload collaborators to acquire essential data regarding the Moon’s regolith (rock and dust debris), geophysical properties, as well as the interaction between solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field.”
Onboard Blue Ghost will be a collection of scientific experiments and technological demonstrations, which includes tests involving a “Lunar PlanetVac” aimed at collecting and categorizing lunar soil samples, satellite navigation systems, radiation-adapted computers, and self-cleaning glass capable of eliminating lunar dust, according to Firefly.
For its first mission, Blue Ghost is anticipated to function on the moon for approximately 14 days prior to its landing area being immersed in the icy conditions of lunar night.
Firefly is one of the contributors in NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative wherein the space agency collaborates with private firms to transport payloads to the moon. Other contractors comprise Houston-based Intuitive Machines and Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology.
The objective of the CLPS initiative is to provide NASA with a selection of commercial robotic landers capable of transporting cargo to the lunar surface while the space agency develops independent strategies to send its astronauts to the moon later this decade.
“It’s an opportune moment for the lunar economy,” stated Firefly CEO Jason Kim in December to CNN, emphasizing his “100% confidence in our team’s capability” to successfully land the company’s Blue Ghost vehicle.
Nonetheless, success is certainly not assured.
Ispace, the company based in Japan, realizes this all too acutely: The firm’s initial endeavor to place one of its Hakuto-R landers on the moon concluded in a spectacular failure in April 2023 due to navigation challenges.
Presently, a refined Hakuto-R spacecraft, designated Resilience, will provide Ispace a second opportunity.
This spacecraft will adopt a significantly slower trajectory to the moon compared to Blue Ghost once the landers are released from their Falcon 9 launch vehicle.
According to Jumpei Nozaki, Ispace’s chief financial officer, Resilience aims to touch down on the moon approximately four to five months after liftoff. During this mission, the Resilience lander will carry a small rover alongside technology instruments with varied objectives, including testing algae-based food production and monitoring radiation in deep space.
Ispace has its sights set on an area of the moon known as Mare Frigoris — or the “Sea of Cold,” which is located in the extreme northern sections of the moon’s near side — as its target landing site.
The Houston-based Intuitive Machines made history in February 2024 by successfully deploying a US-manufactured lunar lander onto the moon, marking the first occurrence in over fifty years.
The successful landing of the company’s Nova-C lunar lander, named Odysseus, led to euphoric celebrations during the company’s live stream. However, the landing was not without flaws: Odysseus rolled onto its side due to a navigation error, resulting in the vehicle being left with limited operational capabilities and power.
Nevertheless, Intuitive Machines will soon have another opportunity for success with a new Nova-C lander, named Athena, scheduled to head toward the moon this year.
This mission, expected to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, may commence as early as late February, as the company confirmed on Monday. It aims to land close to the moon’s south pole — an area deemed vital in the current lunar exploration competition due to the presumption of water ice deposits.
Water discovered there could serve to supply astronauts with hydration or may even be transformed into rocket propellant.
Importantly, on board Athena will be PRIME-1, or the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1, a technology demonstration developed by NASA intended to locate and drill for water ice.
Also accompanying Athena will be NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer, a satellite crafted to orbit the moon and utilize remote sensing to identify water.
If both of those NASA payloads work successfully, it will be a positive achievement for the space agency, which suffered the loss of at least four research satellites during the November 2022 Artemis I mission.
The main intention of that flight — to send an uncrewed capsule on a trial flight around the moon — proceeded without a hitch.
However, a collection of small NASA satellites that were deployed alongside the spacecraft, including two aimed at searching for lunar water, did not achieve their intended objectives.
Blue Origin, the aerospace enterprise established by Jeff Bezos in 2000, may also showcase a prototype of its lunar lander.
The spacecraft, known as Blue Moon, is among two vessels NASA has selected to potentially transport astronauts from lunar orbit to the lunar surface. Blue Origin’s contract for this role is valued at $3.4 billion. (The alternative vehicle chosen by NASA is SpaceX’s Starship, which is set to accomplish the first landing in 2027.)
A Blue Moon vehicle capable of transporting humans is probably still several years away from its introduction, however, Blue Origin intends to launch a “pathfinder” lander for cargo missions to the moon as early as this year. It remains uncertain exactly when this will occur, or if that schedule will be maintained.
The mission will dispatch a robotic lander to evaluate Blue Moon’s architecture and propulsion capabilities, striving to ensure a seamless experience for future missions carrying valuable scientific payloads or crew members on board. NASA will also install one scientific instrument called Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume Surface Studies, or SCALPSS, which consists of a series of cameras intended to observe how lunar dust reacts to the engines of landers as they approach for landing.
Blue Origin’s pathfinder vehicle is scheduled to launch from one of the company’s New Glenn rockets, which was planned for its initial flight Monday morning. Yet, Blue Origin canceled the first launch attempt as engineers addressed an unspecified issue with the rocket.