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Update: Wednesday, January 15, 9:10 am ET: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, carrying Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander and ispace’s Resilience lander, successfully blasted off this morning at 1:11 am ET from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Firefly says it managed to acquire signals and completed the docking in orbitso the job seems to be off to a good start.
The original story follows.
The moon is about to work. Two astronauts are boarding a SpaceX rocket this week, aiming to hit the surface of the moon and unleash a slew of scientific instruments. The two missions are part of a commercial mission to explore the Moon, marking the start of a new era of spaceflight.
Pictures of Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost lander is ispace’s Resilience lander and is set for WednesdayJanuary 15 at 1:11 am ET. The missions will take off from Launch Complex-39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. NASA will announce its launch website and NASA+and airs beginning at 12:30 a.m. ET on Wednesdays. You can also call the feeds below.
Journey to the Moon
Although both will be launched together, each will follow a path to the Moon. Firefly is workcalled “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” it will take 45 days to reach the Moon. For the first 25 days of the launch, the Blue Ghost lander will orbit Earth before firing its engines to put it on its way to the Moon. Blue Ghost will spend four days on its way to the Moon, and another 16 orbits before Earth tries to make a soft landing on its dusty surface.
The Resilience lander, on the other hand, will follow a slower path to the Moon. After operating in orbit, the lander maneuvers the lunar lander, moving it into a low-energy orbit for a soft landing on the Moon.
Japan’s first lunar mission, launched in April 2023, took about four and a half months to reach lunar orbit, but the rover failed to stick to its surface; The Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) Lunar Lander, as it was called, it fell on the Moon and landed on its surface. The Hakuto-R M1 was carrying commercial and government cargo, including a small, two-wheeled convertible robot from Japan’s space agency.
Clean landing
After their trip to the Moon, both of them will be looking at the moon’s mountains – dark, dark craters formed by ancient events that have later been flooded with lava and other materials.
Specifically, Blue Ghost is targeting Mare Crisium, an ancient asteroid impact site that was filled with basaltic lava. The basalts in Mare Crisium are between 2.5 and 3.3 billion years old, according to NASA.
As for ispace Resilience, the astronaut is planning to explore Mare Frigoris, which is located in the northern part of the Moon. The place’s name means “cold sea,” as it travels north of the moon for about 900 kilometers (1,400 miles).
What is inside the Blue Ghost lander?
Firefly’s first mission from Texas to the Moon is a collaboration with NASA as part of the space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), which aims to develop commercial delivery services to the Moon. NASA works with industry partners to develop spacecraft that can carry its scientific and technological payloads and deliver them to Earth.
Blue Ghost has 10 scientific instruments for lunar exploration and data collection to support future human missions to the Moon, according to NASA. These instruments include: LEXI (or Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager), which will take a series of X-ray images to study the relationship between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetic field; Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder, designed to measure electrical and magnetic fields to determine the composition of the Moon’s mantle; and the Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies, which will record how the lander’s plume disrupts the lunar regolith as Blue Ghost touches the surface of the Moon.
The service is set to run for a full day of the month – the equivalent of 14 days on Earth. During this time, Blue Ghost will also take pictures of the lunar sunset, gathering information about how the regolith on the Moon reacts to the sun’s influence during the lunar evening.
What did ispace carry in its lunar mission?
Tokyo-based Ispace carries private customer cargo to the Moon and places it there, including food production experiments, deep space exploration, and an alloy commemorative saucer.
The Resilience lander is also carrying a small rover, named Tenacious, to explore the terrain, collect lunar regolith, and return data to the lander, according to ispace. Tenacious has a familiar camera and a shovel. A model house designed by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg will be placed on the rover, which we think is decorative.
This implementation is only the tip of the iceberg, with many more riders to follow in the coming months and years. Intuitive Machines, which became the first commercial company to land on the Moon in February 2024, it plans to launch its second lunar probe. Its second mission is expected to launch sometime in February and will be aimed at the southern region of the Moon.
Astrobotic, who failed in his first attempt to land on the Moon in January 2024, hoping for good luck this year. The Pittsburgh-based company plans to launch Griffin Mission One with another moon in 2025 under NASA’s CLPS.
As the space industry expands, moon landings will become more frequent as companies work to improve their lunar delivery operations. What we are about to witness this week is just the beginning.
Additional reporting by George Dvorsky.
