Spacebit, a London-based firm, will launch a rover to the moon aboard Astrobotic’s Peregrine moon lander in July of 2021. This is the first mission for the Peregrine moon lander and its rocket, the Vulcan Centaur. It will be the first time that a UK developed spacecraft will be sent to the lunar surface and it will also be the first time that a legged spacecraft has explored a planet, moon, asteroid etc that isn’t Earth. The rover will move approximately ten meters on the lunar surface and will transmit data back to Earth for the duration of its ten-day mission. If all of this goes according to plan, Spacebit plans to send more of these rovers to the moon to explore the lunar surface and subsurface. One of the priorities for Spacebit is to research lava tubes on the moon as they provide a potentially good place for human settlements.

Spacebit’s rover will not be the only thing that will be sent aboard Astrobotic’s Peregrine moon lander, however. There will be a total of thirty payloads aboard this moon lander, fourteen of which will be from NASA and granted Astrobotic a $79.5 million award for the mission via the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

This 2021 mission is going to be historic for the British. If this commercial lunar mission turns out to be successful, the British will have joined the ranks of the Soviet Union, the United States, and the People’s Republic of China for having pulled off a successful moon landing. This will also be the first time that a commercial lunar mission will have done so since the moon landings by the Soviets, Americans, and Chinese have been done by government agencies. Past attempts at landing on the moon successfully were carried out by India and Israel earlier this year. India’s Chandrayaan-2 lander failed to land successfully on the moon, but the mission includes a lunar orbiter, which is still going strong.