Tag: Blue Ghost

Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander wins its fourth lunar NASA contract

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Peregrine landing site

NASA yesterday awarded the rocket startup Firefly a $179.6 million contract to carry six NASA science instruments to the Moon on its Blue Ghost lunar lander, the third lander contract the company has won and the fourth Moon contract overall.

[The four contracts include] three lunar landers as well as one to provide radio frequency calibration services from orbit to support a radio science payload on the second lander mission.

The first mission, Blue Ghost 1 or “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” is scheduled for launch in mid-January, with a landing in the Mare Crisium region of the near side of the moon about 45 days after launch. Blue Ghost 2 will follow in 2026, landing on the lunar farside. That mission will also deploy ESA’s Lunar Pathfinder communications satellite into orbit. Both the second and third Blue Ghost missions will use Firefly’s Elytra Dark as an orbital transfer vehicle, delivering the landers to lunar orbit. Those vehicles will remain in lunar orbit to provide communications services.

This new contract will have Blue Ghost land in the Gruithuisen Domes region, as shown on the map to the right. This had been the landing target for the Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander when it launched in January 2024, but that mission failed when it developed a fuel leak shortly after launch. Astrobotic was able to operate the spacecraft through most of its trip to and from the Moon, but had to cancel the landing.

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Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander now targeting mid-January launch window

10:08 am

Landing sites on Moon

According to a media update from NASA yesterday, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander now targeting mid-January launch window for its unmanned mission to the Moon.

A six-day launch window opens no earlier than mid-January 2025 for the first Firefly Aerospace launch to the lunar surface.

The Blue Ghost flight, carrying 10 NASA science and technology instruments, will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Media prelaunch and launch activities will take place at NASA Kennedy.

The first quarter of 2025 will be a busy time for unmanned missions to the Moon. In addition to Firefly’s mission, the American startup Intuitive Machines also hopes to launch its Athena lander to the Moon’s south pole in February. Though it will launch after Blue Ghost, it will get to the Moon first, as it is taking a more direct week-long route compared to Blue Ghost’s 45-day journey. In addition, the Japanese company Ispace is targeting its own January launch for its Resilience lander.

If all three lift off as planned, there will be three landers heading for the Moon in early 2025.

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Firefly delivers its first Blue Ghost lunar lander for final environmental testing

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Blue Ghost in clean room
Blue Ghost in clean room

Firefly this week completed the integration of the ten customer payloads onto its first Blue Ghost lunar lander and shipped the lander to JPL in California for final environmental testing before its planned launch before the end of this year.

Following final testing, Firefly’s Blue Ghost will ship to Cape Canaveral, Florida, ahead of its launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket scheduled for Q4 2024. Blue Ghost will then begin its transit to the Moon, including approximately a month in Earth orbit and two weeks in lunar orbit. This approach provides ample time to conduct robust health checks on each subsystem and begin payload operations during transit.

Blue Ghost will then land in Mare Crisium, a basin in the northeast quadrant on the Moon’s near side, before deploying and operating 10 instruments for a lunar day (14 Earth days) and more than 5 hours into the lunar night.

Once launched, Firefly will become the third American company, after Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, to build a privately owned lunar lander and attempt a lunar landing. Since the other two companies were not entirely successful in their landing attempts, Firefly has the chance to be the first to succeed.

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Firefly wins Australian payload for its second Blue Ghost lunar lander mission

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Firefly yesterday announced that the Australian commercial company, Fleet Space Technologies, will fly its seismometer on Firefly’s second Blue Ghost lunar lander mission, planned to land on the far side of the Moon in 2026.

Fleet Space’s SPIDER payload is part of the Australian Space Agency’s Moon to Mars initiative that’s aligned with NASA’s Artemis program to support future habitation on the Moon. Upon deployment of the payload, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander will provide ongoing power and communications, enabling SPIDER to capture seismic data from the lunar surface for up to 14 days. This data will offer insights into the geological properties of the lunar subsurface and its mineral profile, such as water ice, that can support lunar infrastructure and further regolith exploration.

The mission also has payloads from NASA and the European Space Agency. Note that all three governments are buying the lunar landing services from this private company, rather than build the lander themselves.

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Firefly wins its second NASA contract to land payloads on the Moon

8:59 am

Capitalism in space: Firefly announced today that it has won a $112 million NASA contract to use its Blue Ghost lunar lander to bring three instruments to the Moon, one into orbit and two on the ground on the far side of the Moon.

Before landing on the Moon, the company’s Blue Ghost transfer vehicle will deploy the European Space Agency’s Lunar Pathfinder satellite into lunar orbit to provide communications for future spacecraft, robots, and human explorers. After touching down on the far side of the Moon, the Blue Ghost lunar lander will deliver and operate NASA’s S-Band User Terminal, ensuring uninterrupted communications for lunar exploration, and a research-focused payload that measures radio emissions to provide insight into the origins of the universe.

The NASA press release provides more details about the three payloads.

This is Firefly’s second NASA lunar lander contract. The first is scheduled to land in 2024 and deliver ten NASA science instruments to Mare Crisium, the large mare region in the eastern side of the Moon’s visible hemisphere. This second flight is tentatively scheduled to launch in 2026.

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Firefly approves design of its unmanned lunar lander

9:08 am

Capitalism in space: Firefly has completed and approved the design of its unmanned lunar lander, and will now begin construction with a launch date targeting 2023.

Firefly said Monday that it has completed the “critical design review” phase of its program to develop a lunar lander. This means the company can now proceed to build and order components for the “Blue Ghost” spacecraft and begin its assembly. Firefly aims to launch the spacecraft as the primary payload on a Falcon 9 rocket in the fall of 2023.

NASA is sponsoring the mission as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program, through which it pays private companies to deliver scientific experiments to the Moon. NASA is paying $93.3 million for this Blue Ghost mission, which will carry 10 payloads down to the Mare Crisium lunar basin in September 2023.

In the next three years a plethora of commercial unmanned lunar landers have scheduled flights, all bringing both NASA science as well commercial payloads to the lunar surface. All are being designed and built by private companies. Expect some to fail. Some however will succeed, and will thus establish themselves as the go-to companies if you want to put a payload on the Moon.

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NASA awards Firefly lunar contract

9:29 am

Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday announced that it has awarded the new smallsat rocket company Firefly a $93 million contract to build a lunar lander for delivering scientific payloads to the Moon’s surface.

This is the first delivery awarded to Firefly Aerospace, which will provide the lunar delivery service using its Blue Ghost lander, which the company designed and developed at its Cedar Park facility. This facility also will house the integration of NASA and any non-NASA payloads, and also will serve as the company’s mission operations center for the 2023 delivery.

The lander is based on the design of Israel’s Beresheet lunar lander that failed in its landing attempt in 2019. After that failure a group of Israeli engineers from that project formed their own company, and partnered with Firefly to build a new lander, which is now dubbed Blue Ghost.

The NASA contract itself replaces OrbitBeyond, which had won a lunar landing contract initially but had backed out in 2019.

Finally, the timing of this announcement immediately after Firefly had revamped its board of directors to remove its main Ukrainian backer from an obvious management position is most telling. Suggests to me that they did that revamping in direct response to NASA’s concerns, and once done NASA could then move forward with the contract award.

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