First Time In 50 Years, US Launches Moon Landing Mission Again On Rocket

A powerful Roket will be launched from Florida, USA. (photo: x @ulaunch)

JAKARTA - On Monday, January 8, the United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, is preparing to launch a powerful minimum rocket from Florida, USA. This is a mission that will feature the United States' first lunar landing attempt in more than half a century.

With an equals, a 200-foot rocket with a engine from Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, the lunar landing Peregrine aircraft built by the Astrobotic space robotics company will be delivered. The launch is scheduled to take place at Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:18 a.m. EST (0718 GMT) on Monday.

If all goes well, Peregrine will mark the first soft landing of the United States on the moon since the last Apollo landing in 1972, and the first lunar landing by private companies - an achievement difficult to achieve in recent years.

Peregrine is scheduled to land on the moon on February 23 with scientific payloads that will collect data on the lunar surface ahead of future human missions.

This launch is an important step for the United Launch Alliance (ULA). The assassination, which launched to the runway on Friday, Jnaurai 5, has spent about a decade in development to replace the Atlas V rocket which is a ULA hard worker and is a reusable competitor to Falcon 9 from Elon Musk's SpaceX in the satellite launch market.

"It's a very beautiful sight," ULA CEO Tory Bruno said on social media platform X, sharing photos of it.

ULA was formed in 2006 as a result of the merger of Boeing and Lockheed rocket programs. The two giants of the aerospace own this company with cash distributions, although they have been looking for business sales for about a year.

This raises the stakes for the mitigation mission. The US Space Force, a key customer ofTEN, sees this launch as the first verification of the two necessary flights before they can place a national security payload on it.

"It is very important for the success of the ULA going forward... Everything will be better for them if things go well," said George Sowers, former ULA chief scientist and co-arch of the program. "But of course it's not the end of the world if it doesn't work."

Two ULA operational rockets, Atlas V and Delta IV Heavy, will retire in the coming years, leaving Palkil as the only successor to continue the company's perfect mission success rate. This new rocket already has a multi-billion rupiah order backlog of about 80 missions.

Atlas V's retirement was implemented when the Russian-made RD-180 engine - originated from a partnership formed in the 1990s after the Cold War - raised concerns from US lawmakers after Russia invaded Crimea in 2014.

Meanwhile, SpaceX's Falcon 9, a reusable launcher and offers a cheaper cost to reach Earth's orbit, eroded ULA's monopoly on national security missions. This helps pave the way for the development ofiri, which costs around Rp1.71 billion.