Next Moon flight

[Paul451]

The payload for the 2026 Australian Artemis mission is apparently called "Roo-ver". And yes I hate every single person even vaguely involved in its naming.

[QuantumG]

The payload for the 2026 Australian Artemis mission is apparently called "Roo-ver". And yes I hate every single person even vaguely involved in its naming.

> The Australian public chose the name, after a competition that saw more than 8,000 entries.

Me too 

Nah, I'm not this grumpy anymore. In fact, I recently bought myself a robotic research platform - the kind of kit a Masters student would pay good money to have extracted from their brain using Spotless Mind tech. There's so many terrible design decisions in this thing, the documentation is horrible- it's the v1 an embarrassed professional would delete. The kind of person who walks away from that and appreciates the opportunity to construct something better - both in terms of design and in building the teams and processes to get it done right - they'll be working on this rover. Which itself is a silly name for a robotics platform.

Looking forward to more landers!

[Phil Stooke]

Taken from the list a few posts before this one:

[NET 2024-9]   Blue Ghost M1 (RAC, LMS)   United States (Firefly Aerospace)
[NET 2024-10]   IM-2 (Prime-1)         United States (Intuitive Machines)
[NET 2024-11]   Griffin-1 (VIPER)         United States (Astrobotic)
[NET 2024]   Hakuto-R 2         Japan (ispace)

I think it's very probable that the VIPER launch will be postponed.  Astrobotic is talking about flying its cuberover soon and it might fly with VIPER at some later date.  I think this cuberover is what Astrobotic previously called Moonranger and was supposed to fly on Masten's lander.  I'm wondering if some other payloads will be combined with the cuberover to make a test flight of Griffin, assuming some funding can be found.  A big assumption!

Otherwise we are left with three other landers.  Will they fly this year?  In what order? All very uncertain so far.  Does anyone have any other news to report on this?

[AndrewM]

Otherwise we are left with three other landers.  Will they fly this year?  In what order? All very uncertain so far.  Does anyone have any other news to report on this?

It looks like IM-2 is still targeting Q4.

“The technical improvements for IM-2 are vertically integrated capabilities within the company that we can perform with little or no impact on our intended quarter 4 2024 launch date or require any additional capital investment while we continue assembly of the flight vehicle.”

https://spacenews.com/intuitive-machines-making-upgrades-to-second-lunar-lander/

[Vultur]

Is Roo-ver on Artemis 3, or just part of the Artemis program but on a separate launch?

[Phil Stooke]

Roo-ver on Artemis 3? Was it not supposed to fly on the CLPS lander which carries the ESA PROSPECT payload? That was just awarded to Intuitive Machines.

[Phil Stooke]

Still very much uncertain are the dates and order of launch of the three upcoming Moon missions: IM-2, Blue Ghost and HAKUTO-R M2. It looks to me like they would all launch within a period of a few weeks, from late December to late January. But less uncertain (barring major delays) would be the order of landing. Flight times are approximately as follows:

IM-2: 5 days to landing
Blue Ghost: c. 45 days to landing
HAKUTO-R M2: c. 90 days to landing.

So if they all launch over a few weeks, they will land in that order regardless of launch order. We can expect landings in January, February and March or April.  Then maybe that Blue Moon test flight, and IM-3 (Lunar Vertex) late in the year. Does that sound about right?

[AndrewM]

Blue Ghost and Hakuto-R Mission 2 are targeting January now with IM-2 in February.

At the same time, ispace also announced in coordination with SpaceX the Mission 2 launch is scheduled for no earlier than January 2025. Preparations of the RESILIENCE lander are progressing smoothly, and it will be shipped to Florida on-time according to the planned schedule for final launch preparations.

https://ispace-inc.com/news-en/?p=6326

Firefly is now preparing to ship the lander to Cape Canaveral, Florida, in mid-December for launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during a six-day window that opens no earlier than mid-January 2025.

https://fireflyspace.com/news/firefly-aerospace-blue-ghost-mission-1-to-the-moon-readies-for-launch/

Intuitive Machines is currently working on a second lunar lander mission whose launch, the company revealed in the call, had slipped to February 2025.

https://spacenews.com/intuitive-machines-calls-for-infrastructure-first-focus-for-artemis/

[Phil Stooke]

Following on from my previous post, but with these launch dates: if the launch dates hold we will get IM-2 landing in February, Blue Ghost landing in March, ispace HAKUTO-R M2 landing in April.

[AndrewM]

Hakuto-R Mission 2 and Blue Ghost Mission 1 are on the same F9 launch during a 6-day window in mid-January and then IM-2  follows on February 27th.

Blue Ghost Mission 1 & IM-2 could be landing very close to each other.

https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1869225583793893606

In their keynote, ispace confirms that they are sharing a Falcon 9 with Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander, launching in a six-day window in mid-January (the same timeframe provided in the NASA/Firefly briefing earlier today.)

AstroForge CEO mentioned the first mission is on February 27th and it cost $7 million for the ride.

[Phil Stooke]

The next launch to the Moon will be late February, Intuitive Machines mission 2 with the Athena lander and PRIME-1 payload among other goodies. What comes after that? IM-3, the Lunar Vertex CLPS mission with rover to Reiner Gamma is said to be on the books for late this year, but that has reportedly slipped into early 2026. The other contender for another flight this year is the Blue Moon Mark 1 Pathfinder lander from Blue Origin, but that depends on further flights of the New Glenn launch vehicle.

[DanClemmensen]

The next launch to the Moon will be late February, Intuitive Machines mission 2 with the Athena lander and PRIME-1 payload among other goodies. What comes after that? IM-3, the Lunar Vertex CLPS mission with rover to Reiner Gamma is said to be on the books for late this year, but that has reportedly slipped into early 2026. The other contender for another flight this year is the Blue Moon Mark 1 Pathfinder lander from Blue Origin, but that depends on further flights of the New Glenn launch vehicle.

If we are considering all missions that might occur, based on landing dates announced in the last year, I think we need to add the uncrewed Starship HLS demo. The most recent published projection I found was for 2025. It has a large number of prerequisites that have not yet occurred, however.

[AndrewM]

There is also Griffin Mission One which is currently targeting a November/December launch for a December landing.