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 was able to receive a signal and complete an on-orbit mission, so the mission appears to be off to a good start.
The first article follows.
It’s going to be a busy month. A pair of astronauts boarded a SpaceX rocket this week, aiming to touch down on the moon’s surface and deliver a load of scientific instruments. The two astronauts are part of a commercial mission to explore the Moon, marking the beginning of a new era of private spaceflight.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander and ispace’s Resilience lander will be launched on Wednesday, January 15 at 1:11 am ET. The mission will take off from Launch Complex-39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, aboard a SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. NASA will live stream the launch on its website and NASA+, with the broadcast starting at 12:30 p.m. am ET on Wednesday. You can also tune into the live feed below.
Journey to the Moon
Although both occupants will launch together, they will follow a different path towards the Moon. Firefly’s mission, called “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” will take 45 days to reach the Moon. In the first 25 days after launch, the Blue Ghost lander will orbit the Earth before firing the engine to set it on its way to the Moon. Blue Ghost will spend four days en route to the Moon, and another 16 orbiting Earth’s satellite before attempting a soft touch on its dusty surface.
The Resilience lander, on the other hand, will follow a slower path to the Moon. After operating in an elliptical transfer orbit, the lander will conduct a lunar flyby, transitioning to a low-power trajectory to reach a planned soft landing on the Moon.
The first Japanese lunar mission, launched in April 2023, took about four and a half months to reach lunar orbit, but the lander eventually failed to stick to the surface; the Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) Lunar Lander, as it was named, landed on the Moon and crashed on the surface. The Hakuto-R M1 carried both commercial and government payloads, including a small, two-wheeled manoeuvrable robot from the Japanese space agency.
Clear to stay
After their journey to the Moon, the two occupants will be targeting the moon’s craters—flat, dark plains formed by ancient impacts that later filled with mud and other material.
Specifically, Blue Ghost is targeting Mare Crisium, the site of an ancient asteroid impact site that was once filled with basaltic mud. The basalts of Mare Crisium are between 2.5 and 3.3 billion years old, according to NASA.
As for ispace’s Resilience, the occupant will explore Mare Frigoris, located in the northern reaches of the Moon. The name of the area is translated as “cold sea,” as it extends to the northern part of the Moon’s disk for about 900 kilometers (1,400 miles).
What’s inside the Blue Ghost lander?
Texas-based Firefly’s first mission on the Moon is a collaboration with NASA as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which aims to develop commercial delivery services to the Moon. NASA is working with its industry partners to build space shuttles that can pack up their cargo of science and technology and transport it to the lunar surface.
Blue Ghost carries 10 scientific instruments to study the lunar surface and collect data to support future human missions to the Moon, according to NASA. The instruments include: LEXI (or Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager), which will capture a series of X-ray images to examine the interaction of the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field; the Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder, designed to measure electric and magnetic fields to characterize the structure and composition of the Moon’s mantle; and the Lunar Plume-Surface Studies Stereo camera, which will capture how the plume lander disrupts the lunar regolith as Blue Ghost touches down on the Moon’s surface.
These missions will operate for a full lunar day—the equivalent of 14 days on Earth. During this time, Blue Ghost will also capture images of the sunset, and collect data on how the regolith on the Moon responds to the sun’s influences during lunar twilight.
What did ispace pack into its Lunar mission?
Tokyo-based ispace is transporting secret customer cargo to the Moon on its spacecraft, including food production experiments, deep space radiation probes, and a commemorative alloy plate.
The Resilience lander also carries a small rover, called Tenacious, to inspect the landing site, collect lunar regolith, and transmit data to the lander, according to ispace. Tenacious is equipped with a high-definition camera and shovel. A model house by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg will be installed on the rover, which we assume is for decorative purposes.
This launch is just the tip of the iceberg, with many more residents set to follow in the coming months and years. Intuitive Machines, which became the first private company to land on the Moon in February 2024, is preparing to launch its second lunar lander. Its second mission is scheduled to launch in February and will target the southern region of the Moon.
Astrobotic, which failed in its first attempt to land on the Moon in January 2024, is hoping for better luck this year. The Pittsburgh-based company plans to launch the Griffin Mission One lunar lander sometime in 2025 under NASA’s CLPS program.
As the private space industry continues to grow, lunar landings will likely become commonplace as companies work to improve their delivery services to the Moon. What we will see this week is just the beginning.
Additional reporting by George Dvorsky.