A rocket carrying a lunar lander for the first time in more than 50 years lifted off from Cape Canaveral Spaceport in Florida early on Monday. Notably, the 'Peregrine' lander' has been developed by a Pittsburgh-based company called Astrobotic, which was selected through NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services. Peregrine is scheduled to touch down on a mid-latitude region of the Moon called Sinus Viscositatis, or Bay of Stickiness, on February 23.
Interestingly, Sharad Bhaskaran, who is of Indian origin, is the mission director at Astrobotic Technology.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Mr Bhaskaran is currently the Mission Director at Astrobotic Technology Inc. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His job is to lead the engineering team responsible for developing a commercial robotic lunar lander designed to transport payloads to the moon's surface.
''As Mission Director I also manage the budget, schedule, risk, and mission resources (staffing, assets), along with mission operations and development of the spacecraft assembly, integration, and test facility,'' his profile on Linkedin reads. He has been in this role for 7 years and 7 months. Before this, he worked for 25 years with Lockheed Martin.
Born in 1966, he is a graduate in mechanical engineering graduate from the University of Texas at Austin.
Notably, if the launch is successful, Astrobotic could secure its place as the first private company to achieve a controlled, or 'soft' landing on the lunar surface. No private company has ever achieved a soft landing on the moon or any other celestial body.
"We're on the cusp of something big here. Hopefully, this will make Pittsburgh a space city," Mr Bhaskaran told CBS News last year.
Peregrine is packed with 20 experiments and international payloads, including six NASA instruments and a sensor valued at $108 million. It also contains more colorful cargo, including a shoebox-sized rover built by Carnegie Mellon University, a physical Bitcoin, and cremated remains, including those of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, legendary sci-fi author and scientist Arthur C. Clarke, and a dog.
According to their website, NASA aims, with Peregrine Mission One, to “locate water molecules on the moon, measure radiation and gases around the lander, and evaluate the lunar exosphere (the thin layer of gases on the moon's surface)”
