2021 The Year Britain Launches To The Moon

Before humankind returns to the lunar surface, UK-built robotic spiders will be skulking across it. All About Space speaks to Pavlo Tanasyuk, the CEO of Spacebit, on spearheading an initiative to explore ancient lunar lava tubes

- Lee Cavendish

For anyone looking to put the day in their calendar, when and where can we expect the launch of Spacebit’s mission?

We don’t know the exact date right now, but it’s summer 2021. There can be a slight delay because of the supply chain. The main customer for the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan Centaur launch is Astrobotic. But we trust the ULA and Astrobotic to get us to the Moon safely and on time.

Have you mapped out where the Peregrine lunar lander is set to land on the Moon?

Lacus Mortis. It’s north of the equator a little bit. It can get changed, but we expect that it will be there. The reason for that is because it’s quite flat, but there is a potential lava tube in the proximity of our landing site. It’s a bit of a stretch to say that we will enter a lava tube during our first mission, but that’s our ultimate goal. That’s why it has legs and not wheels, because it’s designed in a unique way so that it can walk on rough terrain and crawl into some interesting spots.

Regarding the Asagumo rovers, these look absolutely fascinating, but in terms of engineering, what size are they, how do they move and how are they shielded from the unfiltered rays of space?

That’s a good question. The size is, with the legs folded, we are talking about 16 to 18 centimetres long (six to seven inches) and about 14 centimetres (5.5 inches) tall.

No bigger than a toaster, for example?