Lunar ridesharing While both Firefly and ispace had previously announced agreements to launch their lunar landers on Falcon 9, the assumption in the industry had been they would launch on separate rockets, particularly since ispace launched its first lander on a dedicated Falcon 9. Only in December, though, did ispace announce Resilience would launch together with Blue Ghost 1, a week after a Bloomberg report stated they would share a ride. The two companies, though, offered few additional details about the arrangement. At the NASA pre-launch briefing, Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science missions at SpaceX, said it was the launch provider that performed the matchmaking. “In this particular case, both Firefly and ispace came to SpaceX directly, and we paired the two payloads together,” she said, describing a company philosophy to maximize payload capacity. “When we found a solution for Firefly and ispace’s missions to fly together on the same Falcon 9, it was a no-brainer to put them together.” She added that combining the two landers on a single launch allowed each customer to reduce their launch costs, but declined to disclose specific figures. Blue Ghost is considered the primary payload and Resilience the rideshare secondary payload, she said. At ispace’s own pre-launch briefing Jan. 8, Takeshi Hakamada, chief executive of ispace, said the company had designed the lander to be compact to enable rideshare launch options. For the first mission, the company opted for a dedicated launch but sought a rideshare for the second mission to reduce costs. “SpaceX is the one who decided to make that happen. It was not us who decided to rideshare with Firefly,” he said through an interpreter. Blue Ghost science Blue Ghost 1’s primary customer is NASA, which is flying 10 science and technology demonstration payloads through the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Those payloads include several studying the lunar regolith and how it adheres to materials as well as tests of the ability to use navigation signals from GPS and Galileo spacecraft in cislunar space. Maria Banks, CLPS project scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, said at a Jan. 13 briefing that the landing site was chosen to avoid magnetic anomalies that could disrupt operations of some instruments. The landing location also has few rocks on or below the surface that could prevent one instrument, a heat probe, from drilling up to three meters below the surface. She said NASA and the leads of the 10 experiments have coordinated closely with Firefly to plan operations of the experiments for up to two weeks after landing, when sunset at the landing site ends operations of the solar-powered lander. “It’s very tricky of course, to plan around limited resources to make sure everyone gets what they need at the time that they need it during the mission,” she said. That includes, she said, coordinating operations of experiments studying lunar dust in different ways. This is the first lunar lander mission for Firefly, which is working on two more lander missions that will also carry NASA CLPS payloads. “Landing on the moon is very, very hard,” said Chris Culbert, NASA CLPS program manager, at the Jan. 13 briefing. “While we’ve been quite impressed with Firefly’s preparation for this mission, it will be their first lunar mission and landing. We look forward to Firefly overcoming any challenges and obstacles they may see.” Kim said at the pre-launch briefing that Firefly, best known for its work on launch vehicles, and its workforce “don’t get the recognition, in my humble opinion, that they deserve for everything that they do to get ready for this moment.” He noted that the lander carries a plaque with the names of company employees and investors. “It really puts this bold mission into perspective, knowing our Blue Ghost lander will soon have a permanent home there.” Resilience, the second lunar lander by Japanese company ispace, during prelaunch preparations. Credit: