CTK
Updated 2 hours ago
United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket launched from Florida on Monday with a lunar module from Astrobotic Technology. It is the first US rover to attempt a lunar landing in more than 50 years, as well as the first privately owned lunar rover. Whether Astrobotic Technology will be the first private company with a module on the moon, however, is not yet certain.
Astrobotic Technology will try to land on February 23, but in the meantime, a module from the American company Intuitive Machines will also launch with a rocket from SpaceX, which will fly a shorter route to the moon, and according to the AP agency, it is possible that it will land earlier.
While Houston, Texas, the home city of Intuitive Machines, has long been associated with space exploration, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with Astrobotic Technology, is a newcomer. About 1.9 meters tall, the AT module is named Peregrine, derived from the Latin name for falcon. It houses 20 research “packages” from seven countries, as well as a shoebox-sized vehicle from the private Carnegie Mellon University.
On board, in addition to scientific equipment, are the cargoes of Celestis and Elysium Space, which specialize in sending cremated human remains into space. These are symbolic DNA elements or ashes of several dozen people, including the creator of the space cult series Star Trek Gene Roddenberry, the science fiction writer, pioneer and author of the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke or the trio of former US presidents George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.
For example, while Clark’s ashes will rest in a module on the surface of the moon, Roddenberry’s remains will separate from the module along with the launch vehicle and “go on a never-ending journey through our solar system,” Celestis says on its website.
According to the AP, Monday’s launch is the beginning of a space race for private companies, which can begin accepting orders for space transportation from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and other clients. In 2019, both Astrobotic Technology and Intuitive Machines each received almost 80 million dollars (about 1.8 billion crowns) from NASA for the development of these services. A total of 14 companies have similar contracts with NASA.
So far, only four countries and their space agencies have managed to land on Earth’s natural satellite, namely the US, Russia, India and China. The fifth could be Japan, if in two weeks it is possible to successfully land its module, which took off from the Earth last September. Japan could also have taken the lead among private companies, but Ispace’s machine crashed on the moon last April, four months before the failure and fall of the Russian lunar module.
The launch of Vulcan last week was protested by representatives of the Native American population from the Navajo tribe, who consider sending human remains to the moon to be a desecration of a sacred place. AT responded by saying that the cargo would not be stored directly on the moon, but would remain in the lunar module, and that the company complied with “all regulations and laws for commercial activities outside Earth orbit”.
The Navajo tribe expressed their displeasure already at the turn of the millennium, when a NASA probe with the ashes of geologist Eugene Shoemaker deliberately crashed into the moon. Buu Nygren, chairman of the Navajo Nation reservation, the largest Native American territory in the United States, said NASA apologized to the tribe at the time and “promised to consult with Native tribes before authorizing any further lunar mission with human remains.” However, it appears that the authority “did not keep its word”, Nygren added.
According to AFP, senior NASA official Joel Kearns assured that the agency takes the concerns of the indigenous people “very seriously”. At a press conference, he announced the holding of an intergovernmental meeting with representatives of the Navajo tribe. At the same time, he pointed out that NASA does not have the authority to oversee the costs of private missions.
2024-01-08 11:44:27
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