The first lunar rover made in Europe is set to land on the moon tonight, carrying a tiny red house and a scoop.
The rover, called Tenacious, is just 31.5cm wide and 54cm long and weighs 5kg – around the size and weight of an empty carry-on suitcase.
It is one of the smallest and lightest rovers in the world and is operated by ispace EUROPE from Luxembourg.
“It’s a big deal,” said ispace EUROPE’s chief executive Dr Julien Lamamy to Sky News.
“We’ve designed this rover, built it, tested a lot of it, and we’re going to operate it all from Luxembourg.”
“We’re showing that in Europe, […] space companies have a startup mindset that can contribute a lot to the achievements of the European space.”
Tenacious will also be the first private rover to operate on the moon’s surface, and will drive for around ten days before it “gets too cold and too dark”, according to Dr Lamamy.
The mission’s launch in January. Pic: ispace
The rover, which blasted off from Earth on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in January, is arriving on the moon with some fairly unusual cargo.
A tiny red house, designed by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg, will be placed on the lunar surface and photographed to represent “an artistic and epic story of new possibilities”, according to ispace.
Mr Genbeg has been trying to get his art to the moon for 25 years, said Dr Lamamy, “but 25 years ago, only space agencies were going to the Moon”.
“To me, that reflects what we’re here for,” he said. “Of course, we’re here to contribute to science and exploration and knowledge about the moon, but we’re also here to give access to other folks that have cool projects.”
There’s also a scoop on board to collect moon dust, which will be sold to NASA for $5,000 (£3,685) – the first ever sale of off-planet resources.
The Resilience lander. Pic: ispace
The rover is being carried in a lander spacecraft called Resilience, which launched in January on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and entered lunar orbit on 6 May.
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Also aboard the lander is a water electrolyser, a module containing food production experiments, a deep space radiation probe and a commemorative plate.
It is due to land on the Mare Frigoris region of the near side of the Moon at 7.17pm BST.
This will be ispace’s second attempt to land on the moon, after it tried in 2023, only to lose connection with its lander in the final stages of the mission.
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After spending 100 days in space and decelerating from 6,000 kilometres per hour to a walking pace a few metres above the moon’s surface, the signal from the lander was lost.
“We have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface,” said Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of ispace, at the time.
Dr Lamamy said those issues have been rectified – for his team, now what remains is to experience “one of the biggest moments of our lives”.
