A New Moon Race Features Companies Vying For The First Private Landing

Elizabeth Howell Contributor Science


Artist's conception of Masten Mission One. MASTEN SPACE SYSTEMS

Who will be the first private company to set a lander on the moon?

You’re looking at one of the contenders right here. Masten Space Systems plans to send a lander to the moon called Masten Mission One in 2022, and just this week, the company announced it will catch a ride on a SpaceX rocket for the epic mission.

"We share a common vision with SpaceX and that makes this more than a partnership. It's more like a dream team," said Masten CEO Sean Mahoney in a statement.

To date, every lander that has touched down successfully on the moon has been helmed by a space agency — like NASA. That’s not to say people haven’t tried. The Google Lunar X Prize (GLXP) was supposed to spur private lander development. The prize concluded in 2018 with no winner declared, but happily, several contenders have continued development. One may make a touchdown with NASA in the near future.

The program to watch for is NASA’s Commercial Lunar Services Program (CLPS). It is supposed to send robotic landers and machines to the moon in support of eventual human missions, which NASA hopes to start in 2024. So far, four companies have agreed-upon landing dates: former GLXP contender Astrobotic Technologies' Peregrine Mission One in June 2021, Intuitive Machines' Mission 1 in October 2021, Masten Mission One in December 2022, and Astrobotic's Viper around 2023.

Here’s the thing, though. The technology is in such early development that any one of these companies could be contenders to touch down first, depending on how many things go. Will the spacecraft be ready for launch? Will the rocket work when it lifts the spacecraft into orbit, and towards the moon? And what about the tricky landing?

Israel Aerospace Industries attempted to land the Beresheet spacecraft on the moon in 2019, but a failure caused it to crash during final approach. This means that the contender for first mission to land will be down to the wire.

The Beresheet lunar lander captured a picture of itself and the moon below, at an altitude of 13 ... [+] SPACEIL/IAI

To be sure, it isn’t just about being first. These missions also represent NASA’s (and other agencies’) greater efforts to make the moon a destination for commercialization, rather than the current trove of moon rocks that we think of it as. Perhaps we could settle a base of astronauts near a deposit of water ice, creating a hub of people working on research and development in microgravity similar to the International Space Station.

If we want to explore further into space, we just can’t take everything with us. We need to learn to live off the land, and to take the resources from different worlds to carry them across the solar system. The moon represents an ideal destination to bring water and resources off the surface, as its lower gravity makes it easier to launch things. It will be expensive in the short term, experts say, but with enough volume and demand the costs may begin to lessen after a few years or decades of operations.

How possible is this vision? After all, back in the 1960s - that optimistic era of the first moon landing - there were hopes that regular moon missions would continue and that we would send people to Mars in the 1980s. That never came to be for various funding and political reasons, but the difference today is commercial companies are more able to work on their own. We live in an era where commercial cargo ships bring supplies to and from the International Space Station, and we just saw the first private spaceflight with astronauts to the ISS (Demo-2).


The scorched SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft from Demo-2 is shown here during splashdown on Aug. 2, ... [+] NASA VIA GETTY IMAGES

Costs to go to space have decreased in recent years as component miniaturization and more powerful computers have let smaller satellites launch with more capabilities. We’re now seeing the first satellite refuellings take place, and vast numbers of satellite constellations take to the skies to deliver broadband services.

This is not fully an easy journey — there still are questions about regulations and responsibilities, not to mention that concern about solving problems on Earth first — but at least know that space now is a more diverse environment than 10 years ago.

So, who will be the first private lander on the moon? It’s too close to call now. The bigger question is not who makes the first touchdown, however, but what it means in the future. The collective knowledge from these companies will inform future moon missions and perhaps, even missions to Mars one day. Whatever happens next, it sure will be an interesting decade coming up in space exploration.

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Elizabeth Howell
I've been writing about space exploration since 2004. I began full-time freelancing about this topic in September 2012, after working as a business reporter, copy editor and web reporter at various publications. My work covers all aspects of space -- exploration, astronomy, basic science and more -- and I've been published in trade magazines and news outlets across Canada and the U.S. Follow me on Twitter -- @howellspace.