Spacebit CEO Pavlo Tanasyuk at Moon Village conference at the International Space University in Strasbourg. Photo: Twitter

U.K.-based Spacebit signed a joint agreement with Astrobotic to begin commercial and scientific lunar exploration with the first mission in 2021 on the Peregrine lunar lander. Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander will be launched on a Vulcan Centaur rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The launch will carry the first lunar lander from American soil since Apollo.  With this announcement, Spacebit joins Astrobotic’s existing manifest of 16-signed contracts toward Peregrine Mission One.

CEO of Spacebit, Pavlo Tanasyuk, commented “We could not be more excited to fly this mission with Astrobotic. This mission will result in the first payload from the UK to reach the Moon surface and mark the beginning of a new era in commercial space exploration for Britain.”

“Astrobotic is very excited to bring Spacebit’s first payload to the Moon. Spacebit has pioneered a captivating new way of working on the lunar surface, and we look forward to more details being released soon,” said Astrobotic CEO John Thornton.