PHOTO PROVIDED BY ASTROBOTIC

(Updated Jan. 8, 2024)

We’ve made ketchup and steel and the Mr. Yuk sticker, and now we’re making lunar landers. And the first one launched very early today.

The Peregrine Lunar Lander, made by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic, was launched aboard a Vulcan Centaur rocket early Monday from Cape Canaveral. It was the first launch for the company, which was awarded nearly $80 million from NASA to deliver scientific payloads to the moon. 

Here are five things you need to know.

1. The lander was constructed in Astrobotic’s headquarters in Manchester, also home of the Moonshot Museum, which opened in 2022. Visitors to the museum could watch the lander being built through a window.
2. A team of students from Carnegie Mellon University built a small Iris rover for the mission designed to roll away from Peregrine while on the moon and take a photo of the lander. The team’s mentor was Astrobotic co-founder Red Whittaker, a CMU robotics professor.
3. According to NASA, the scientific objectives of the mission are to study the lunar exosphere, thermal properties and hydrogen abundance of the lunar regolith (the layer of unconsolidated rocky material on the moon’s surface), magnetic fields and the radiation environment. 
4. Once Peregrine reaches the moon’s orbit, the lander will begin its descent depending on when the lighting lines up — the moon receives 14 days of sunlight followed by 14 days of darkness. Peregrine is expected to land on Feb. 23 and operate for about 192 hours. 
5. This is the second delay for the mission. The initial launch date was set for May, but Colorado-based United Launch Alliance, which crafted the Vulcan rocket set to carry Peregrine, postponed the launch after one of ULA’s Vulcan rockets exploded during testing. ULA postponed the second launch, set for December, after a couple of “routine” issues were detected during tests.