By Adam Kovac Published February 25, 2025 | Comments (2) | Photo of Intuitive Machine's Athena lunar lander. Intuitive Machines Should Wednesdays launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center proceed as planned, its gonna be carrying a buttload of science with it. The rocket will be carrying not one, not two, but three important payloads, including a satellite set to orbit the Moon, a privately operated lunar lander, and a spacecraft that could pave the way for asteroid mining. Its also launching an unidentified 16U satellite, managed by Exolaunch, thatll park itself in geostationary Earth orbit. While the missions launch window opens on February 26, with blastoff ideally occurring at 7:17 p.m. ET, these types of things can get delayed in a hurry if conditions arent optimal. NASA will be livestreaming the launch on its website. Alternately, you can watch it at the livestreams below, courtesy of NASA Spaceflight. After decades of largely being ignored, the Moon has become an object of increased fascination, and two items on the manifest could provide data that contributes to the goal of building crewed bases on the lunar surface. That includes a Nova-C lander, dubbed Athena, built by Intuitive Machines for NASAs Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. In February 2024, Intuitive Machines became the first private company to successfully land on the Moon, though there was a slight snafu. The companys Odysseus ended up getting one of its legs caught, causing it to tumble on its side. Like Odysseus, Athena is set to land on the Moons South Pole region, specifically an area called Mons Mouton. The lander is equipped with a drill and mass spectrometer, which it will useif all goes wellto search for and measure chemical components like water, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus that could support future crewed exploration of the Moon.Hitching a ride on the lander will be Grace, a Micro-Nova robot designed to hop in and out of a permanently shadowed crater. While inside the crater, Grace will search for water and snap a few photos. Also heading to the Moon is NASAs Lunar Trailblazer, a smallish satellite designed to map the distribution of water across the lunar surface. The mission aims to solve the mystery of the Moons water cycle, while also answering questions about the form, amount, and distribution of lunar water.Another spacecraft will zoom towards the Moon, but it wont be stopping there. Astroforge, founded in 2022, is seeking to become the first company to mine asteroids for precious minerals. In 2023, it launched its first mission, a satellite that was supposed to vaporize and sort pre-loaded faux-asteroid materials. The mission didnt do so well, as the company struggled to communicate with the spacecraft and had issues deploying its solar array. For this follow-up mission, launching Wednesday, the company is decidedly more ambitious. If successful, Astroforges Odin spacecraft will set a record as the farthest-traveling privately built vessel in history. Odins flight plan calls for it to complete a five-day journey towards the Moon, using its gravity to propel itself towards an asteroid called 2022 OB5, a candidate for future mining due to its possible metallic composition. Its not clear when Odin might reach the asteroid. This objective is going to take much longer to achieve and therefore has a far lower likelihood of success, CEO Matt Gialich said in a statement. Gialich seemed to be tempering expectations ahead of launch, saying that the company is taking exceptional risks on this mission, more risks than most companies would be willing to accept.If this mission fails, the fault lies with me alone, he added. I was involved in the intimate details of every trade-off we madeand we made a lot. If all goes well, in several decades time you just might think of this launch as a turning point, when youre sitting in your Moon base living room, admiring your watch made from asteroid-mined platinum.Daily NewsletterYou May Also Like By Isaac Schultz Published February 24, 2025 Adam Kovac and George Dvorsky Published February 21, 2025 By Isaac Schultz Published February 20, 2025 By Adam Kovac Published February 19, 2025 By Isaac Schultz Published February 19, 2025 By Adam Kovac Published February 19, 2025