There will soon be a lot of work on the Moon. This week, a pair of landers are launching aboard a SpaceX rocket to land on the lunar surface and unpack a host of scientific instruments. The two missions are part of a commercial push for lunar exploration that marks the beginning of a new era of private spaceflight.
The launch of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander and ispace’s Resilience lander is scheduled for Wednesday, January 15 at 1:11 a.m. ET. The missions will launch from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. launching will live-stream the launch on its website and NASA+, beginning at 12:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
The way to the moon
Although both vehicles will launch together, each will follow its own trajectory to the Moon. The Firefly mission, called “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” will take 45 days to reach the Moon. For the first 25 days after the launch, the Blue Ghost lander will orbit the Earth, after which the engine will put it on a flight path to the Moon. Blue Ghost will spend four days on its way to the Moon, and another 16 days orbiting the Earth’s satellite before attempting a soft landing on its dusty surface.
The Resilience lander, on the other hand, will take a much slower route to the moon. After operating in an elliptical transition orbit, the lander will circle the Moon, switching to a low-energy trajectory for a planned soft landing on the Moon.
The Japanese startup’s first mission to the moon, launched in April 2023, took about four and a half months to reach lunar orbit, but ultimately the lander failed to land on the surface; the Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) lunar vehicle, as it was named, fell rapidly toward the moon and crashed on its surface. The Hakuto-R M1 carried both commercial and government payloads, including a tiny two-wheeled robot transformer from the Japanese Space Agency.
Clear for landing
After traveling to the Moon, both vehicles will target lunar mares – flat, dark plains formed by ancient collisions that were subsequently flooded with lava and other materials.
In particular, Blue Ghost is targeting Mare Crisium, the site of an ancient asteroid impact that was once filled with basaltic lava. According to NASA, the basalts on Mare Crisium are between 2.5 and 3.3 billion years old.
As for ispace’s Resilience, the lander is to explore Mare Frigoris, located in the far north of the Moon. The name of the place translates to “sea of cold” as it stretches along the northern part of the lunar disk for almost 900 miles (1,400 kilometers).
What is inside the Blue Ghost landing module?
Texas-based Firefly’s first mission to the moon is a collaboration with NASA under the space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which aims to develop commercial cargo delivery services to the moon. NASA is working with its industry partners to develop landers that can pack scientific and technical payloads and deliver them to the lunar surface.
According to NASA, Blue Ghost carries 10 scientific instruments to study the lunar surface and collect data to support future human missions to the Moon. The instruments include: LEXI (or Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager), which will take a series of X-ray images to study the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetic field; the Lunar Magnetotelluric Probe, designed to measure electric and magnetic fields to characterize the structure and composition of the lunar mantle; and a stereo camera for studying the lunar plume and lunar surface, which will record how the lander’s plume disturbs the lunar regolith during the Blue Ghost’s landing on the lunar surface.
The mission will last a full lunar day, which is equivalent to 14 days on Earth. During this time, Blue Ghost will also take images of the lunar sunset and collect data on how the regolith on the Moon reacts to solar exposure during lunar twilight.
What did ispace take with it to the Moon?
Tokyo-based ispace is carrying payloads belonging to private customers to the moon aboard its lander, including a food production experiment, a probe to measure radiation in deep space, and a commemorative alloy plate.
According to ispace, the Resilience lander also carries a small rover, Tenacious, which will explore the landing site, collect lunar regolith, and transmit data to the lander. Tenacious is equipped with a high-definition camera and a shovel. The rover will carry a model of a house by Swedish artist Mikael Henberg, which we assume will serve decorative purposes.
This launch is just the tip of the iceberg, and several more rovers are planned for 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 for February and will be aimed at exploring the lunar south polar region.
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 its Griffin Mission One lunar vehicle sometime in 2025 as part of NASA’s CLPS initiative.
As the private space industry continues to grow, lunar landings are likely to become a regular occurrence as companies work to develop their cargo delivery services to the moon. What we will see this week is just the beginning.
