Colmena Project: where to see the launch of the first Mexican mission to the Moon live

Project Beehive will be launched on January 8 on a rocket that will leave from Florida (NASA)

The Colmena Project, the first Mexican mission to the Moon, already has a launch date and time and the interested public will be able to follow it through a live broadcast that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has already opened online.

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The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) with the Mexican Space Agency (AEM) will launch five micro robots into space that will be part of another NASA project. The destination is the Moon since they have the objective of assembling a panel on that satellite that generates energy.

The date will be January 8, the project will take off at 1:18 a.m. as scheduled and if there is no problem. The robots will travel on the Vulcan-Centaur rocket that will launch from the Space Launch Complex-41 launch pad located at Cape Canaveral.

The ULA rocket will arrive on February 23 to the Moon (YouTube/United Launch Alliance)

To follow the takeoff from the Space Force Station in Florida, you will only need to go to YouTube, where the live broadcast is already scheduled. Starting at 0:30 a.m. on January 8, the broadcast of everything that happens during the first minutes of the mission will begin.

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The transmission is already counting down through this link.

It is expected that the UNAM and the AEM will also share the takeoff broadcast through their social networks.

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In the description offered by the United Launch Alliance (ULA) it is stated that the rocket in which the Mexican minirobots will travel will also carry another project; both will carry out work on the Moon, but in different ways.

This is what the micro robots that UNAM will launch into space look like (UNAM Institute of Nuclear Sciences)

The mission to which the Beehive Project corresponds is called Peregrine Mission One (PM1) and is dedicated to an initiative for lunar science and technology. The other mission is Enterprise Flight, which is a project in which cremated remains or DNA travel as part of a tribute to human beings in space.

For the Mexicans involved in the Colmena Project, it is a moment full of expectations, since they have been working on it for years and it will finally be launched with the support of several universities, the Mexican government and NASA.

“Everything is ready in Cape Canaveral, we are counting down to the launch of Colmena, a project that belongs to all of Mexico, and that, in this collaboration of the AEM and the UNAM, will confirm that Mexican ingenuity is capable of achieving the greatest challenges,” said Rogelio Jiménez Pons, Undersecretary of Transportation of the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation (SICT).

There were 250 students from UNAM, the National Polytechnic Institute and other universities who created the minirobots of the Colmena Project, their leader was Dr. Gustavo Medina Tanco (LINX)

So far, Peregrine Mission One is scheduled to reach the Moon and land in Sinus Viscositatis, an area that NASA also calls Sticky Bay, which is northeast of Oceanus Procellarum (or Oceans of Storms).

The PM1 landing is expected to be at the end of February, on the 23rd, just after the sun rises, and will operate for around 192 hours.

NASA explains in the information card for this mission that its objective is to study the exosphere of the Moon, its thermal properties and the abundance of hydrogen in the regolith of said satellite. It is also mentioned that advanced solar panels will be tested.

For its part, the Space Instrumentation Laboratory (LINX) of the Institute of Nuclear Sciences of the UNAM, mentions on its site that this is the most ambitious project they have had since, if successful, it will be a pioneer in testing the use of micro robots in space exploration and mining tasks.

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