Moon lander from US company launches to space aboard Vulcan rocket

A robotic lander built by a private company was bound for the moon on Monday in an attempt to make the first U.S. lunar soft landing in half a century, after launching to space aboard a new Vulcan rocket debuted by a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

A robotic lander built by a private company was bound for the moon on Monday in an attempt to make the first U.S. lunar soft landing in half a century, after launching to space aboard a new Vulcan rocket debuted by a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Space robotics firm Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander launched toward space at 2:18 a.m. EST from Cape Canaveral, Florida on the first flight of Vulcan, a powerful rocket built by the Boeing-Lockheed venture United Launch Alliance.

If all goes well, Peregrine would mark the first U.S. soft landing on the moon since the final Apollo landing in 1972, and the first-ever lunar landing by a private company - a feat that has proved elusive in recent years. Peregrine is set to land on the moon on Feb. 23 with scientific payloads aboard that will seek to gather data about the lunar surface ahead of planned future human missions.

The launch was a crucial first for United Launch Alliance (ULA). Vulcan has spent roughly a decade in development to replace ULA's workhorse Atlas V rocket and rival the reusable Falcon 9 from Elon Musk's SpaceX in the satellite launch market.