At 1:11 a.m. Wednesday morning, the sky over Cape Canaveral lit up as a SpaceX Falcon 9 leaped off the launch pad which sent NASA astronauts to the moon during the Apollo missions.
That was fitting considering onboard this SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket were two lunar landers − ispace’s lightweight lander known as RESILIENCE and Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander, which is carrying 10 science and technology payloads for NASA.
Once safely in orbit, Blue Ghost will be deployed on its way first, followed by RESILIENCE.
Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science missions at SpaceX, described the Blue Ghost mission as “one step closer to making life multiplanetary”.
What’s in a Name: Firefly’s Blue Ghost on Ghost Riders in the Sky mission
The Firefly Aerospace lander is named Blue Ghost after a rare firefly species. With the company’s name, it fit perfectly. Blue Ghost’s mission is known as Ghost Riders in the Sky. “The Ghost Riders in the Sky name really played into that with our Blue Ghost theme,” said Ray Allensworth, spacecraft program director for Firefly.
Kevin Scholtes, Firefly’s future systems architect, told FLORIDA TODAY they are trying to build an image of a highway going out to the moon with this mission name.
How Firefly’s Blue Ghost came to be
In 2021, Firefly was awarded a mission contract by NASA, which included the Blue Ghost lander carrying 10 payloads to the moon. Firefly was selected based on the payload capacity.
“What NASA is doing is they’re contracting for the manifest capacity in the space, as opposed to the lander specifically,” Scholtes told FLORIDA TODAY.
This is all part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services or CLPS, an effort aimed at utilizing private company landers to carry science payloads to the moon. The science and technology payloads will increase NASA’s understanding of the moon, assist with design of future spacecraft, and even increase safety of future astronauts.
Launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander will carry 10 science and technology payloads to the moon for NASA. It is expected to land in early March 2025.
This is Firefly’s first mission. NASA has specified the landing location as the Mare Crisium crater, where Blue Ghost will land within a 100 meter (0.062 miles) ellipse. It will rely on onboard cameras to bring it down to a safe location.
“As much as we’ve studied the moon, as much as we’ve looked at it, our knowledge of what the surface looks like up close is pretty limited to orbital imagery. So we don’t know in advance whether or not there’s a big boulder right where we want to touch down or a big crater,” said Scholtes.
Allensworth described the lander as “fairly wide and short”. She told FLORIDA TODAY that Firefly prepared by doing plenty of drop testing – which looks at just what the lander can handle in terms of impact and touching down on various surfaces.
The Firefly Blue Ghost lander is a bit bigger than the average car, measuring 6.6 feet-tall and 11.5 feet-wide.
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Firefly Blue Ghost journey to the moon
According to Scholtes, as soon as the lander separates from the Falcon 9 and powers on, statistics and health data will begin to be relayed back to the team on Earth. Payload data will be also be sent back quickly, as data will be collected during the 45-day journey to the moon. Most of that includes a 30-day orbit around Earth before heading to the moon.
So why is it taking Blue Ghost 45 days to travel to the moon?
Scholtes told FLORIDA TODAY there are many ways of getting to the moon, and the question came down to what was most efficient for the mission. “A lot of it is a question of what makes the most sense for mass efficiency, for saving propellant, (and) some of it is a simple question of what makes the most sense for scheduling,” Scholtes said.
“We chose a solution that allows us to incorporate a lot of payload observation opportunities in transit between the Earth and the moon. It also saves us a lot of propellant – in terms of we have an initial period that we orbit Earth, and part of that period, the moon is actually pulling on the orbit every time we go around the Earth, making it a little bit bigger each time,” said Scholtes.
Blue Ghost NASA payloads
One payload is taking full advantage of this trajectory. The LuGRE (Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment) payload, which is testing the possibility of a future moon navigation system, will collect data during passes by different points on Earth, and then again from the lunar surface. LuGRE will attempt to tap into existing Earth-orbiting Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) from the distance of the moon. This experiment is a partnership between NASA and the Italian Space Agency.
Other experiments will work to study lunar conditions to provide insights into future spacecraft designs and even the safety of future astronauts, said Nicola Fox, associate administrator with NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
Also onboard is an experiment looking into repelling moon dust, which was a challenge during the Apollo moon missions. According to Fox, lunar dust can impact instruments and even astronaut health.
For example, Kristen John, who is the lunar surface innovation initiative technical integration lead at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, told FLORIDA TODAY that the Stereo CAmera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) mission from NASA’s Langley Research Center will measure the impact of dust on the spacecraft and also the impact of the spacecraft on the surface as Blue Ghost is touching down.
“We have cameras essentially on the bottom of the lander that will literally measure as it’s landing the interaction of the plumes and the engines interacting with the surface,” said John.
Once Blue Ghost lands on the moon, the payloads will have only 14 days of sunlight to gather data.
The NASA payloads include:
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Stereo CAmera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) – NASA Langley Research Center
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Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) – Italian Space Agency (ASI) and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) – NASA Kennedy Space Center
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Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) – Boston University, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and Johns Hopkins University
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Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) – Southwest Research Institute
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Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER) – Honeybee Robotics (Blue Origin)
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Lunar PlanetVac (LPV) – Honeybee Robotics (Blue Origin)
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Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC) – Aegis Aerospace
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Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR) – University of Maryland
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Radiation Tolerant Computer (RadPC) – Montana State University
The afternoon before launch, Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly Aerospace told media that Firefly is “honored and humbled to play a role in paving the way for lasting lunar presence.” Engraved on the lander are the names of all the company’s employees and key investors.
Meanwhile, the lander known as RESILIENCE, which is part of the HAKUTO-R Mission 2 for Japanese aerospace company, ispace, will land within 4-5 months. The lander will deploy a micro rover named TENACIOUS, and collect regolith samples. It is the company’s second attempt after a failed effort in 2022.
Be sure to follow the FLORIDA TODAY Space Team at FloridaToday.com/Space for the latest from the Space Coast.
Brooke Edwards is a Space Reporter for Florida Today. Contact her at bedwards@floridatoday.com or on X: @brookeofstars.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: NASA science: Firefly Blue Ghost lander launches from Florida to moon