This Private Moon Lander Is Kicking Off a Commercial Lunar Race

A boxy, 7.5-foot-tall spacecraft is making its final approach to the moon, where it will make history—if it touches down safely. It’s poised to be the first commercial lander to set its robotic feet there, with competitors sure to follow.

The Tokyo-based company Ispace lofted itsM1 lands on December 11, 2022. After tracing a roundabout, energy-efficient trajectory, it’s expected to reach the surface of Atlas Crater on the ​​southeastern outer edge of Mare Frigoris at about 12:40 pm Eastern time Tuesday, which is 1:40 am Wednesday morning in Japan. (“Moon time” is not a thing yet.) Sticking the landing would make Ispace a leading player in a nascent lunar aerospace industry, as many companies, mostly based in the US, are planning their own landers, rovers, and payloads.

The Ispace lander comes equipped with a large, 400-Newton thruster and six additional thrusters, enabling a controlled descent to the surface. With those thrusters, the navigation system, and four landing legs, Ujiie hopes the craft will achieve a soft touchdown. The company chose its landing site so that engineers at mission control in Tokyo will be able to maintain visual contact and communication with the lander.

While this mission is a technology demonstration, M1 will arrive carrying payloads, including 360-degree cameras from a Canadian company and rovers from the Japanese space agency and the United Arab Emirates.

Soon, the Ispace lander will have plenty of company. Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic will be sending its Peregrine lander on the debut flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket, which could launch in June. Houston-based Intuitive Machines plans to send two Nova-C landers to the moon this year, with another slated for 2024. Other companies, like Firefly Aerospace and Draper, have their own landers heading there in the next couple years. SpaceIL will make another attempt, sending Beresheet 2 in 2025. And Astrobotic and Ispace are already looking ahead toward more ambitious landers to follow their initial designs.

Still, although there are a growing number of private clients for space shipping, the expanding market is significantly driven by NASA through itsCommercial Lunar Payload Services program. About twice a year, NASA has been putting out calls for bids to deliver a science payload—or occasionally a technology development one—that it wants shipped to a specific lunar location by a certain date. Companies then bid on those transportation services. In 2019, NASA tapped Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines for such deliveries, and later this year one of them will make the program’s first lunar drop. Each order is worth about $100 million on average, and NASA’s agreements so far total about $1 billion, says deputy program manager Ryan Stephan. One of the ultimate goals, he says, is to help jump-start this new industry. “We focus today on the science return of our missions, but an important benefit of the project is developing this commercial lunar economy,” he says.

NASA’s biggest CLPS contract by far, worth about $330 million, will involve bringing the agency’s Viper lunar rover to the moon’s south pole in November 2024. That job is going to Astrobotic’s Griffin, its successor to Peregrine and the largest lander of the bunch.

Firefly’s second Blue Ghost will haul NASA’s LuSEE-Night, a low-frequency radio telescope, to thefar side of the moon in 2026. It will also deploy the European Space Agency’sLunar Pathfinder communications satellite into moon orbit.

While there’s no connection between CLPS and NASA’sArtemis program—which is focused on crewed missions, not robotic ones—some CLPS payloads will supplement the agency’s long-term plans for a human base on the moon. That includes the Viper rover, plus gear for a lunar ice mining experiment to be carried by Intuitive Machines’ second lander this year.

Working with NASA can mean big contracts, but because it’s a government agency, there are also some strings attached. For example, NASA has “planetary protection” rules that demand that its own spacecraft be scrubbed and scrutinized to avoidstowaway microorganisms that could contaminate other worlds. (The rules for Mars are much tougher than for the moon, since’s Mars is more likely to have once hosted life.) Commercial spacecraft in NASA partnerships must also get licenses fromthe Federal Aviation Administrationand Federal Communications Commissionand that review process includes considering planetary protection, Stephan says.

As the moon becomes a more popular visiting spot, there will surely be a more concerted effort toassess lunar resources,mine water iceand extract oxygen for fuel. Perhaps in the 2030s, lunar ice could be utilized for propellant for spacecraft en route to Mars and beyond. The limited quantity of ice could eventually poseethical concernsif these nonrenewable resources are quickly exhausted or if mining them damages the lunar environment. But for now, these early commercial missions look like the beginning of an ice mining bonanza—and Ispace aims to be a part of that endeavor, Ujiie says. “Our main interest is in the water,” he says. “If we can access those water resources, the moon would be like a space gas station.”

Update 4-25-2023 1 pm ET: Update: The lander appears to have reached the moon’s surface at the expected time, but Ispace mission control has lost contact with it. The vehicle sent flight data just before the expected landing, but the company hasn’t been able to determine its status since then. It’s not clear yet whether the craft survived the landing. “We will never quit,” founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada told the crowd that had gathered to watch the landing, noting that the company is already planning a second and third mission. You can see the livestream of the landing here.