SpaceX Falcon 9 launches historic dual mission with Blue Ghost and Resilience moon landers
- by TechSpot
- Jan 17, 2025
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– Firefly Aerospace (@Firefly_Space) January 14, 2025
Firefly's Blue Ghost lander, part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, carries a suite of scientific instruments and technology demonstrations. The CLPS program, established in 2018, aims to foster the development of commercial lunar landers while providing NASA with a cost-effective means of delivering payloads to the Moon. Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA's science directorate, acknowledged the high-risk nature of these missions to Ars Technica but emphasized their potential rewards. "We know it's high risk. We accept it's high risk, but man, it's high reward. So it is worth taking the risk because the science that we will get back from these missions is just going to be amazing."
The Blue Ghost lander is scheduled to spend approximately 25 days in Earth orbit before embarking on a four-day transit to the Moon. Its target landing site is Mare Crisium, a vast impact basin on the Moon's near side. Upon touchdown, tentatively set for March 2, the lander will operate for about 14 days, conducting experiments with its onboard instruments, including a subsurface drill and an X-ray imager.
Alongside Firefly's lander, ispace's Resilience lander represents a purely commercial venture. This mission marks ispace's second attempt at lunar landing, following a crash in 2023 due to a software error. "I think the fact that we have two lunar landers on the same rocket for the first time in history is pretty substantial," said Ron Garan, CEO of ispace's US-based subsidiary and a former NASA astronaut. "I think we all are rooting for each other."
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