Astrobotic, which is building a service to make the Moon accessible to the world, has announced that DHL and Airbus Defence and Space are supporting the company to develop its lunar payload delivery service.
Deutsche Post DHL Group will become the official logistics providers for Astrobotic’s first mission to the Moon. DHL will provide logistics services for Astrobotic’s spacecraft and its customer payloads, making sure that all materials for the new lunar lander, as well as the space freight will arrive safe and on time to begin their journey to the Moon.
“Moon exploration is a theme that has a special historical significance for us DHL was founded in 1969, the year of the first moon landing. Today, we are excited to be embarking upon this incredible venture into the next era of logistics beyond Earth and to the Moon. Having played a pioneering role in logistics for many years, we are looking forward to partnering with Astrobotic to open a new frontier in space, and to further developing lunar logistics in the future,” said Arjan Sissing, senior vice president, global brand marketing, Deutsche Post DHL Group.
Airbus Defence and Space, the world’s second largest space company, will contribute initial engineering support to Astrobotic through a Memorandum of Understanding, as the company advances its lunar lander design to a preliminary design review.
Together, the team will advance the technical maturity of the new Peregrine Lunar Lander toward the next big development milestone. Peregrine builds on eight years of Astrobotic lunar lander development, and will carry Astrobotic’s first delivery of payloads to the lunar surface. Peregrine will fly as a secondary payload on its first mission, with the ability to fly Astrobotic’s future missions thereafter. Peregrine offers mission flexibility with a 30-265kg payload capacity. This enables secondary flights on several different launch vehicles.
June 2, 2016