Successfully land = transmit data from the surface
1,000
3.00Given transit times to the moon I'd be pretty surprised if any of these landed in 2024
Blue Ghost is the only one that I gather still has a chance but it has a NET date of Nov and a transit of ~45 days so would need to launch first half of Nov (possible but I'd say say highly unlikely)
Hakuto-R2 has a transit of 4-5 months so while it's still targeting a 2024 launch, even if it launched today it wouldn't land till next year
And I gather the rest are all now targeting launches next year:
I really think IM-2 has great potential in general. EDIT - delayed yesterday https://spacenews.com/ice-hunting-lunar-trailblazer-im2-nearly-ready-january-2025-launch/
The VIPER rover is currently planned to land on the Griffin lander. That makes this option a little different from the others, which are landers. For this option, is data from the rover required to resolve yes, or just the lander? That is, if Griffin works and VIPER doesn't, it looks to me like the question resolves No; is that correct?
@EvanDaniel Good catch, a technicality I hadn't appreciated.
Ideally I'd like to clarify that if Griffin works that would be enough by itself for a YES, however as the largest NO holder, can you give me a good faith answer of whether you thought you were betting on that on that vs on VIPER alone?
@JoshuaWilkes I was mostly betting on schedule (it will slip again), hadn't really tried to work through the implications of the data transmission question when I placed the bet. Any decision is fine by me. I think the likely scenario for "Griffin works, VIPER doesn't" probably involves a crash landing / lander fell over type scenario. I assume "messages from VIPER relayed through Griffin" count as transmitting data? If VIPER has to manage the transmission on its own, that makes the crash-landing scenario more complex.
There are also weirder possibilities, but realistically not in 2024: /EvanDaniel/will-nasas-viper-rover-launch-on-as
@EvanDaniel thanks for generous attitude. Then I will change the option to Griffin/VIPER because this seems the cleanest (although I would be stunned if this ever matters)
@JoshuaWilkes I would be stunned if it matters in 2024. I do think there are other options, though. For example, I think these three questions might all be relevantly different, especially seeing what happened with the SLIM and IM-1 landers:
/Sailfish/will-astrobotic-technologys-griffin
@EvanDaniel even after 24 a scenario where Griffin can transmit data and VIPER can't seems pretty unlikely