Astrobotic, the Pittsburgh-based space delivery company, has had some good news and bad news in the last week.
The good news for the company - that wants to be the first private entity to land and operate an unmanned rover on the moon so it can win the $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE – is that it recently signed another customer for its first payload.
Lunar Mission One, a global crowd-funded operation that wants to deliver the first digital storage payload to the moon, has agreed to be the eighth paying customer on Astrobotic’s first launch, currently set for “no earlier than late 2017,” Astrobotic spokeswoman Jackie Erickson said Tuesday.
Based in England, Lunar Mission One’s ultimate goal a decade from now is to be the first private company to drill deeply into the moon’s rocky surface, bringing up rock to be analyzed, and leaving a bigger hole for even more digital storage of human history.
But it wants to be part of Astrobotic’s effort and be paying customer in 2017 because “we want to support them in their mission and help prove it can be done by a private company and not a space agency,” said Angela Lamont, Lunar Mission One’s spokeswoman.
For Astrobotic, getting that eighth customer “definitely puts us closer to filling our manifest,” Ms. Erickson said, noting the company recently put its manifest on its website - astrobotic.com/manifest - listing all eight customers to date.
Ultimately it puts it closer to launching on the Falcon 9 rocket Astrobotic intends to lease from SpaceX, the company owned by entrepreneur Elon Musk. Astrobotic has not yet signed a launch contract, however, and won’t until it fills its payload, which is what is largely paying for the mission.
But the bad news – or possibly motivational news – in the last week was that one of its main competitors in the XPRIZE competition, Moon Express, of Mountain View, Calif., announced Sept. 30 that it had signed a launch contract to take its rover to the moon as early 2017.
If Moon Express’ contract with Rocket Lab of New Zealand – which has not yet sent a rocket into space - is finalized, it would be the first official launch contract to date in the now 8-year-old XPRIZE competition.
Astrobotic says Moon Express’ contract will not change the way it operates.
“We will go when our manifest is ready,” Ms. Erickson said. “And we feel [Moon Express getting a launch contract] is good for the industry.”
Sean D. Hamill: shamill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2579
First Published: October 8, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
