By 
November 25th, 2024
Ready for shipping! Blue Ghost lunar lander.
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace
A Moon-bound lunar lander is being shipped to Cape Canaveral, Florida next month under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas announced it has wrapped up the Blue Ghost’s rigid environmental testing for a projected launch in January of next year.
“While we know there will be more challenges ahead, I’m confident this team has what it takes to softly touch down on the lunar surface and nail this mission,” said Jason Kim, chief executive officer at Firefly Aerospace.
Artwork credit: Firefly Aerospace/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Full lunar day
Blue Ghost’s ride into space comes via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, a liftoff within a six-day window that opens no earlier than mid-January 2025.
Once lofted, Blue Ghost will begin its approximately 45-day transit to the Moon. Its destination is a touchdown in Mare Crisium and then operating a suite of payloads for a full lunar day (14 Earth days).
The roughly 60-day mission will be operated from Firefly’s Mission Operations Center in Cedar Park, Texas.
Payload tasks
As part of NASA’s CLPS initiative, the lander’s 10 payloads will perform science and technology demonstrations, including lunar subsurface drilling, sample collection, and mitigation of the pesky lunar dust.
According to a company statement, additional demonstrations by the Blue Ghost include X-ray imaging of Earth’s magnetic field, expected to provide insight into how space weather impacts our planet.
Blue Ghost will capture imagery of the lunar sunset and provide critical data on how lunar regolith reacts to solar influences during lunar dusk conditions. The lander will then operate for several hours into the lunar night.
Artwork credit: Firefly Aerospace/Inside Outer Space screengrab
“Once payload operations are complete, Blue Ghost will capture the lunar sunset and provide critical data on how lunar regolith reacts to solar influences during lunar dusk conditions. Blue Ghost will then operate for several hours into the lunar night,” adds the company statement.
Blue Ghost Mission 1 is the first of three Firefly task orders supporting the NASA CLPS undertaking as part of NASA’s Artemis campaign to “reboot” the Moon with human crews, the space agency’s program to further a lasting lunar presence and stimulate a potential commercial lunar economy.
Go to this informative video – “Blue Ghost’s Journey to the Moon” – at:
Posted in Space News
