The failure of the "Peregrine Falcon" mission meant that the United States' plan to return to the moon was blocked in stages, and the overall plan process was forced to be delayed. Unlike the Apollo program, this lunar landing program will mainly rely on commercial forces to achieve the moon landing, with official U.S. agencies assuming the role of contractor. This setback highlights the potential risks of betting all the return plan on commercial companies.
Written |Lee Hyun Hwan
The U.S. moon landing plan failed to get off to a good start in 2024. On January 8, local time, the lander Peregrine, which carries the United States' vision to return to the moon, leaked propellant shortly after it was launched into space, and it was determined that it would not be able to reach the moon. This US$108 million spacecraft, carrying several scientific detection instruments and human ashes, will usher in the final result: falling into the earth's atmosphere.
This is also the first time that a U.S. private company has attempted to land on the moon - the "Peregrine" was developed by Astrobotic. After resuming the moon landing plan, the U.S. officially funded the dismantling of various stages of the mission and handed it over to various commercial aerospace companies, relying on commercial power to achieve the moon landing.
As the United States' first attempt at a soft landing on the moon in 50 years - the three astronauts on the Apollo Project 17 mission left the moon in December 1972 - the failure of the "Peregrine" mission meant that the United States' return to the moon plan was blocked in stages, and the interlocking moon landing plans were also delayed.
Rocket launch moment
The setback also highlights the potential risks of betting all of a comeback plan on commercial companies. In this article, we will start with the "Peregrine" mission, and provide an in-depth analysis of the similarities and differences between the United States' moon landing plan more than half a century later and the Apollo plan, as well as the new advantages and uncertainties brought by the new model when commercial power bundles national missions.
A moonshot project backed by private companies
The moon landing narrative supported by commercial power began six years ago.
In December 2017, then-US President Trump signed a space policy directive at the White House, announcing that American astronauts would return to the moon and eventually go to Mars.
NASA named its new moon landing program Artemis, after the moon goddess and hunter in Greek mythology. This name echoes the previous generation of the United States’ lunar exploration project, Project Apollo—in Greek mythology, Artemis is Apollo’s twin sister.
Different from the Apollo program, the purpose of this moon landing is far more than just stepping on the lunar surface and planting a flag. The end point of the Artemis project is not the moon, but the starting point of the moon, heading to distant planets; more importantly, on the path to implementation, NASA is no longer an agency that handles the entire process, but rather serves as a government contractor to put forward various requirements and select contractors from a number of commercial companies and university laboratories. Therefore, for commercial aerospace companies, NASA is just one of many customers, and other commercial cargo can even be transported during the mission.
Artemis Project Phase 1
As a small part of the huge project, in the subdivided stage of the moon landing, NASA initially selected nine companies through Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) to compete for multi-billion-dollar contracts. NASA pays private companies to send scientific instruments to the lunar surface and conduct exploration. If the plan is successful, NASA will outsource future manned lunar landing missions to private companies - much like a more complex interstellar delivery service.
This launch is the opening mission of the CLPS plan. According to the plan, there will be at least nine subsequent lunar landing missions, sending different equipment from five companies to the lunar surface. In fact, from rockets to spacecraft to lunar landers, NASA has established cooperation with 13 US aerospace companies, with more than 3,000 upstream suppliers behind it.
The recent US lunar launch missions are training grounds and reliability tests for various companies.
Although the "Peregrine" failed to complete its mission, during the launch phase, the mission was performed for the first test flight of the new rocket "Vulcan" designed by United Launch Alliance (ULA). This rocket developed by a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing was also about to obtain certification from the Department of Defense through this launch.
"Peregrine" lunar lander
Also participating in the mission is Blue Origin, another star aerospace company founded by Bezos. The Vulcan rocket is equipped with two BE-4 rocket engines developed by Blue Origin. This engine has been developed for many years and this is the first official flight mission. Blue Origin also plans to test the "NewGlenn" rocket equipped with multiple BE-4 engines for the first time this year.
Vulcan on the launch pad
The subsequent tasks are also very intensive. Another company called Intuitive Machines has planned to launch its own lunar lander for the first time in mid-February, when the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will be used for the launch phase of the mission. Interestingly, IntuitiveMachines plans to land on the moon on or before February 22 (one day earlier than the planned landing date of the Peregrine Falcon). If it can be achieved, it will become the first commercial company to land on the moon.
The next stage of the lunar mission - a manned flight around the moon - is also being prepared simultaneously. The four astronauts from the United States and Canada are already ready, but the Orion spacecraft (jointly developed by Lockheed Martin and Airbus) they will board has not yet passed complete testing, and the current flight plan has been postponed from 2024 to 2025.
At the same time, SpaceX is still testing its Starship rocket and spacecraft. This is the first fully reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle in history. It has not yet been able to complete launch into orbit, and NASA has planned to use it to carry out the first two official human moon landing missions.
Repeated delays in the Artemis program, as well as the failure of this mission, highlight new difficulties facing the country that once landed on the moon.
After half a century, what is different about the U.S. moon landing program?
The failure of the "Peregrine Falcon" mission will inevitably affect the interlocking moon landing plans, which leads to an intuitive question: Why did the United States land on the moon more than half a century ago, but then never returned? Even the new round of plans will face so many difficulties and uncertainties.
Logically speaking, there is no big technical problem in recreating the drawings of the Apollo program's "Saturn 5" rocket and Apollo space capsule. But the United States does not want to repeat the Apollo program. The previous Apollo program sent humans to the lunar surface, and at the same time promoted large-scale technological innovations, including computer technology, communication technology, materials science, etc.; in the Artemis program, the moon is just a transit station, and it is simply not feasible to fully replicate the Apollo program.
"Saturn V" launched into space
The first is that the two have different goals.
The lunar landing area of the Apollo program was mainly located near the equator of the lunar surface. Later, this area was also called the "Apollo lunar landing area." Specifically, the six lunar landing missions in the Apollo program were all located near or close to the equator of the moon. Such a choice ensures that the solar cells can provide sufficient energy supply under various lighting conditions.
One of the main goals of the Artemis program is to establish a sustainable human base on the moon, and even use it as a transit station to travel further into deep space. Therefore, the new lunar landing mission has set its goal at the lunar south pole. The south pole region is considered to be the most likely area on the moon to contain water ice. Whether it is for human habitation or future deep space exploration, lunar water resources are crucial for providing drinking water and fuel (decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen). For this reason, NASA plans to send an ice drill rover to the moon as early as the second half of this year. One of the subsequent human astronaut missions to land on the moon is also to search for water resources.
Apollo 11 mission
More important factors are economic costs and safety risks.
The Apollo program was born during the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was first proposed in 1960 and was not approved at the beginning. It was not until April of the following year that Soviet astronaut Gagarin successfully entered space aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft and became the world's first astronaut. Spurred by this, then-US President John F. Kennedy officially announced the Apollo program a month later.
The Apollo moon landing mission was full of huge risks and was more like an all-or-nothing "gamble" in the race to land on the moon. From 1968 to 1972, NASA conducted a total of 9 manned lunar missions, 6 of which successfully landed, and 12 astronauts successfully landed on the lunar surface.
Underlying success is a series of fatal risks and accidents. For example, the famous "Apollo 1" accident occurred during the ground testing phase, and a fire broke out that killed three astronauts; in the "Apollo 11" mission, although Armstrong successfully set foot on the moon, he encountered an ignition switch failure when returning to Earth; in addition, Apollo 12, 13, 15 and other missions also experienced major accidents.
In addition to the safety cost, the huge cost of the Apollo program is also unmatched by other projects. The total cost of the plan reached 25.5 billion U.S. dollars, equivalent to 0.57% of the U.S. GDP that year, and accounted for 20% of the overall U.S. science and technology research and development funding at that time. This cost has exceeded 150 billion U.S. dollars in recent years.
For today's NASA, it no longer has unlimited funds and full support like the Apollo program; nor can it tolerate high risks. They must clearly assess the risks of each project. For example, NASA will calculate the exact failure rate of each component and evaluate the risks involved in the failure of each component, sub-component and system.
The Artemis project, born under this background, is regarded as a sustainable project: able to reach the moon at a more economical cost, with more advanced technology and in a safer way.
The U.S. audit department estimates that NASA will invest $93 billion in various developments required for lunar landing missions by 2025. However, if a series of tasks cannot be completed on time, subsequent costs will rise further.
Although the Artemis program currently does not have an order of magnitude advantage in terms of cost and development cycle, the introduction of a commercial competition model will bring huge opportunities for improvement. Compared with the Apollo program, where it is almost impossible to reduce costs, the Artemis program is more reliable in terms of technological innovation and reuse. The longer the project lasts, the cost will decrease accordingly. The participation of "catfish" such as SpaceX and Blue Origin may allow NASA to achieve the ultimate goal of this adventure while significantly saving costs: first go to the moon and then to Mars.
Schematic diagram of establishing a human settlement on the moon
The risks of commercial moon landing are gradually revealed
NASA relies on commercial forces to promote aerospace projects, and values the disruptive effects brought about by private companies' full flexibility and capital utilization efficiency - just like SpaceX has significantly reduced the cost of rocket and satellite manufacturing. Before achieving this goal, technology iteration and cost reduction are also based on failure and trial and error - just like SpaceX in its early days improved the reliability of its spacecraft through successive failures.
Moreover, landing on the moon has always been a mission with a high failure rate. In fact, prior to Peregrine, all moon landing missions carried out by private companies had failed. In April 2019, the lunar lander Beresheet, jointly built by the private company SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, crashed after losing contact while trying to land on the moon; in April 2023, the lunar lander of the Japanese commercial aerospace company ispace also lost contact while trying to soft land and eventually crashed.
Private companies pay more attention to cost control. Under such a premise, the risk of failure will become greater, and more tasks will end in failure in the future. When commenting on the "Peregrine" mission, Nico Dettmann, head of the European Space Agency's lunar exploration team, said that these companies are relatively new and their failures are understandable. Companies will learn from their failures and ultimately achieve cost reductions. But there's no denying that the first few missions can crash.
It can be seen that efficiency, cost and reliability have become three elements that cannot be achieved simultaneously in the US moon landing plan. NASA, which is trying to leverage commercial power, is also accepting the disadvantages of continuous delays in plans.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at a recent press conference that the "Artemis 2" mission has been postponed to September 2025. It originally planned to arrange for four astronauts to complete a flight around the moon at the end of 2024; and the "Artemis 3" mission that will send astronauts to the lunar surface will also be postponed by one year, from 2025 to September 2026 at the earliest.
Lunar lander renderings
This highlights the risks of NASA's strategy of relying on private companies: the moon landing schedule is spiraling out of control. When tasks are assigned to different companies, the progress becomes more difficult for NASA to control. Moreover, the engineering tasks themselves have a certain probability of failure. Therefore, every task failure or schedule lag during the process will affect the progress of the entire plan. And when there are dozens of companies involved, surprises are bound to happen.
For example, according to the plan, the "Peregrine Falcon" is not the first spacecraft to go to the moon. Previously, a commercial aerospace company called Masten Space Systems won a contract from NASA to develop a lunar lander for the latter and plans to launch it in November 2023.
However, NASA's funding did not allow the company to survive until the planned time. The company filed for bankruptcy in the second half of 2022, and its main assets were later acquired by Astrobotic. This also directly led to the cancellation of the original launch mission. In this "Peregrine" launch mission, there were originally five other payloads that were going to the moon with it, but during the lander adjustments before launch, the payloads were placed on the subsequent lunar landing mission.
For the U.S. moon landing plan, the extremely long time period itself is also one of the risks.
Every year, the U.S. Congress passes an annual appropriation bill to determine NASA's specific budget amount. Therefore, one of the most important tasks of the NASA administrator is to persuade the president and Congress to pay more attention to space missions and approve more money. Therefore, the support of Congress and the current president for NASA is crucial.
Before the Artemis program, then-President Obama tended to focus on Mars, that is, sending human astronauts directly to Mars without going to the moon. The succeeding Trump administration supported the existing plan and successfully established the Artemis program.
Jim Bridenstine, NASA administrator during the Trump era (nominated by Trump), once said that NASA accelerated the progress of the moon landing plan to prevent politicians from suddenly changing their minds one day and causing the plan to abort. They even significantly advanced the moon landing date from the originally set 2028 to 2024. This timing is also quite delicate: if Trump wins the 2020 election, the moon landing plan will be completed in the last year of his term.
But the plan didn't work out. On the one hand, the progress of the Artemis project has been delayed one after another, and on the other hand, Trump also failed to be re-elected. Biden entered the White House in 2020, and Jim Bridenstine resigned immediately. Fortunately, the Biden administration has continued its support for the Artemis program, and NASA's budget has continued to grow in recent years. However, under such a mechanism, long-term uncertainty will be difficult to eliminate.
Anxiety also increased. Compared with the uncertainty in the advancement of the plan, external competitive pressure is certain and has never diminished. Globally, a new round of moon landing race has begun. In addition to non-traditional space powers represented by Japan, Israel and India, which have launched attempts to the moon, Russia has also made efforts to show its strength in the field of moon landing. More importantly, China's moon landing plan is still advancing steadily.
As the only country that has ever sent humans to the moon, how will the United States, which has restarted moon landings, get rid of the burden of history and demonstrate its moon landing capabilities in the commercial space era? The aerospace community is still looking forward to new surprises.