If all goes well, at 2:18 a.m. Monday, an unmanned 200-foot-tall rocket carrying a Pittsburgh-made lander will launch into the sky in Florida on the first-ever commercial robotic launch to the moon, on its way to the first American moon landing since the last Apollo mission in 1972.
The $100 million lander, named Peregrine, was made in Pittsburgh over four years by North Side-based Astrobotic, the 16-year-old company with roots at Carnegie Mellon University.
Astrobotic sees this launch not just as historic in space travel but also as the first concrete step in becoming a regular commercial delivery company to space, like a “DHL to the moon,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said, noting DHL is one of its first customers on the flight.
To that end, the lander is carrying 20 different payloads, weighing 110 pounds combined, from seven countries, including the U.S., which all paid Astrobotic $1.2 million per kilogram (equal to about 2.2 pounds) for the delivery.
The payloads range from scientific projects from NASA to experiments by various universities and countries, and commercial packages that include cremated remains and DNA of people, personal mementos and even a display of the first Bitcoin block chain.
The Vulcan rocket, made by United Launch Alliance — a joint effort by the Boeing and Locheed Martin companies — will take off and initially be directed by NASA’s launch command at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
But once the rocket disengages Monday from the lander — it has its own propulsion system — the rest of the lander’s six-week journey to the moon will be overseen from a command center in Astrobotic’s North Side headquarters, not far from Acrisure Stadium.
“To be able to do this from Pittsburgh is something we’re incredibly proud of,” Thornton said in a video interview on Thursday from Florida, where he will be for Monday’s launch. “It’s a big moment.”
This moment could very well be the epoch for the burgeoning commercial space industry in Pittsburgh, with Astrobotic at its center.
“We come from Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh is not a traditional space region or state,” Thornton said Friday in a phone news conference with reporters from across the country that included representatives from NASA, Space Force and UAL. “But we’re making it that we are building a new capability. We’re bringing a new space state online.”
The global space industry was valued at $546 billion in 2022 and is expected to be worth nearly $1 trillion by 2030.
The tri-state Pittsburgh region has taken in about $2 billion in space-related grants in recent years. But determining the real annual impact is hard given how many smaller sub-contractors larger companies are employing, said Justine Kasznica, an attorney and co-founder of the Keystone Space Collaborative, which pulls together companies involved — or hoping to be involved — in the space industry in Pennsylvania.
“We did a survey, and just in the Allegheny, Beaver and Butler county area there are more than 100 companies with prime contracts with NASA” and the U.S. Department of Defense, she said in a phone interview from Florida, where she is also visiting to watch Monday’s launch.
Not only that, but Kasznica, who is also outside general counsel for Astrobotic, said about 200 suppliers from the Pittsburgh region have contributed to Astrobotic’s work.
As a major contractor for NASA, Astrobotic — it already has won about $500 million in NASA contracts over the years, far away the largest amount of any regional company — is already a big national player in the development of commercial space delivery. But there are other companies already vying to compete with them, such as NanoRacks and others, which hope to have their own commercial launches in the coming years.
Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for Exploration, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, said during Friday’s news conference that the decision to award Astrobotic the $100 million contract to build the Peregrine lander for this launch was part of a deliberate broader strategy.
“Instead of NASA having a mission” by itself, he said, “we’re doing it with American industry.”
He said by contracting out what NASA wants to do to private industry, NASA seeks to “leverage entrepreneurship and innovation … and cost efficiency” and eventually build a “group of service providers” for future missions.
This launch is part of NASA’s Artemis project that currently projects nine similar launches over the next decade — a pace “that hasn’t occurred since the Apollo missions,” Thornton noted — with each launch’s delivery building on those prior, with Astrobotic in line to be the delivery company for at least one more of those.
If weather cooperates and all goes well Monday, it will take about six weeks for Peregrine to land on the moon. That’s far longer than the four days it took Apollo 11 to land there during the first moon landing in 1969.
The difference is that Peregrine is going up at a time that is advantageous to launch, but it needs to land in a specific location and time on the moon to be there right at sunrise on that part of the moon, known as Lacus Mortis, on Feb. 23.
If Monday’s launch is scrubbed because of weather or technical problems, there are smaller advantageous windows of time each of the next three days next week that it could take off. No matter when it launches next week, it would still land on the moon on Feb. 23.
That will be a dramatic day for Astrobotic, NASA and space exploration generally.
It is so anticipated that Astrobotic is planning to have multiple locations set up so people in Pittsburgh can watch the landing.
“It’s going to be a great day” when it lands, Thornton said, not just for the company but also its city.
“This mission is a representation that if Pittsburgh can land on the moon,” Thornton said, “Pittsburgh can do anything.”
Sean is a reporter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Reach him at seandhamill@yahoo.com.
