EOY Falcon Heavy Launch pushed out six months

The next expected Falcon Heavy launch had been penciled in for the end of this December. Instead, the launch which will be the next lunar lander from Astrobotic, was pushed out to No Earlier Than July 2026. 

Astrobotic's Griffin-1 lunar lander, carrying NASA and commercial payloads that include rovers from Astrobotic and Astrolab, will wait just a little longer before its planned excursion to the moon. The mission had previously targeted a launch at the end of 2025, but will apparently miss that deadline, according to an Astrobotic update posted on Oct. 24. 

You probably remember that Astrobotic launched their Peregrine lunar lander in January of '24 but it developed a propellant leak and was never able to land. This lander, Griffin, is undergoing hardware and software testing at the Pennsylvania company's facility, where propulsion testing and avionics validations are currently underway. 

Like Peregrine, Griffin was developed under NASA's CLPS program (Commercial Lunar Payload Service) which is a part of Artemis. 

NASA originally planned to fly its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) aboard Griffin, but that mission was canceled in 2024, leading Astrobotic to repurpose its payload spot for commercial rover: Astrolab's FLIP (FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform) rover. (VIPER was recently un-canceled, and added to the manifest of a Blue Origin lunar mission targeted for 2027.) 

Astrobotic Technology’s Griffin lander concept for NASA's Lunar CATALYST project. (Image credit: Astrobotic Technology Inc.)

In addition to FLIP, Griffin will carry Astrobotic's own CubeRover, and several smaller payloads including the Nippon Travel Agency plaque sending messages collected from children in Japan to the moon, the Galactic Library to Preserve Humanity from Nanofiche and the MoonBox capsule that will deliver "items from around the world" to the lunar surface, according to Astrobotic's update.

In the "Big Picture" sense, NASA's CLPS is intended ...

... to stimulate the commercial lunar economy while giving the agency access to low-cost delivery services to the moon. Setbacks and early failures in the program, like Peregrine's mishap or Intuitive Machines' landers both toppling over and ending their mission early, have drawn scrutiny, and Astrobotic's ability to recover with Griffin will be a critical test for both the company as well as the CLPS program.