The agreement between the Ecuadorian Civil Space Agency (EXA), the Space Agency of Colombia (AEC) and Astrobotic strives to use the Lander Peregrine to explore this satellite.

The return of humanity to the moon may not be exclusive to the great powers or the corporations. The Ecuadorian Civil Space Agency (EXA) and the Space Agency of Colombia (AEC) recently signed a joint agreement with the company Astrobotic to launch a moon exploration campaign. (Read: they detect what the first moon could be outside of the solar system)

The agreement between these three organizations, which took place this Friday at the 69th International Congress for Space, aims to use the Lander Peregrine to explore our satellite.

First Latin American moon mission

During the first Peregrine mission, EXA and AEC will jointly develop a small demonstration payload of satellite technology for use in the lunar orbit. Both are private non-profit organizations with programs for civilian space that have been established for many years in their respective countries.

After this first mission, EXA and AEC will follow their first lunar satellite with future payloads of exploration of the lunar surface in the following Peregrine missions.. This campaign marks the beginning of a new era in space travel on the continent.

This agreement comes after EXA and AEC have investigated the field of commercial suppliers of lunar delivery and established that Astrobotic had the technically most mature lunar landing program. With this announcement, EXA and AEC are planning to join the existing Astrobotic manifest of 12 agreements signed with Peregrine Mission One.

"We are excited about AEC and EXA, who have chosen Astrobotic to present their next lunar exploration campaign," said John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic in a statement. "Our service is to make the moon accessible to the world, and it is exactly this kind of international moon campaigns for which Peregrine is designed to serve," he added.

"With 11 years of experience and five previous space missions, we wanted to select serious partners to ensure the success we have had so far," said Ronnie Nader, EXA & # 39; s Director of Space Operations. "That is why we decided to launch this announcement on IAC2018 and selected Astrobotic as our service provider for the Colombo-Ecuadorian Lunar program, which serves the entire region through the IAF GRULAC." (You can read: from the moon to Mars: NASA is 60 years old)

Pilar Zamora, executive director and founder of AEC, said: "To start the moon exploration missions in the Colombian space agency, we made the strategic decision to work with EXA and Astrobotic". He added: "This is the first regional moon project in Latin America and GRULAC, and we are proud to bring the Ecuadorian and Colombian flags to the moon, and we are delighted to be able to scale even larger lunar activities in the future."

The company Astrobiotic was one of the participants in the Google Lunar XPrize competition, which, although it was eventually declared, served as an initiative to stimulate the race for private spaces. In addition to Astrobiotic and PTScientists, Another project called Team Indus of India is planning to launch a rover to the Moon, which is conducting an experiment conducted by Peruvian students.