SpaceX Sends FireFly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost & iSpace Inc.’s RESILIENCE Lunar Landers to the Moon
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launched two lunar landers for Firefly Space and iSpace Inc. this morning.
(Cape Canaveral, Florida) SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launched Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1.11am EST (0611 GMT) this morning; also onboard this mission was iSpace Inc.’s RESILIENCE lunar lander.
Photo of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch of this morning’s Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 from Cape Canaveral, Florida courtesy of SpaceX on X, @spacex.
The flight – which marked Firefly’s first mission to the moon – was the fifth for the first stage booster supporting the mission, which previously launched Crew-9, RRT-1, and two Starlink missions, according to SpaceX.
The launch marked the initiation of Blue Ghost’s approximately 45-day journey to the Moon’s Mare Crisis to conduct numerous NASA science and technology demonstrations, according to a post from SpaceX on X, @spacex.
Specifically, s part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, the Blue Ghost mission will deliver 10 NASA instruments to the moon, and “[prepare us for future human missions to the lunar service,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a post on X, @senbillnelson.
The science and technology demonstrations that will be conducted on the moon via the Blue Ghost lander include lunar subsurface drilling, sample collection and X-ray imaging of Earth’s magnetic field, with the goal of “[advancing] research for future human mission on the moon and [providing] insights into how space weather impacts the planet,” per today’s post on SpaceX’s website.
After deployment, the iSpace RESILIENCE lander began its four to five month jouney to the Moon; ispace aims to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface, deploy its TENACIOUS Micro Rover, explore the Moon’s surface and collect regolith, according to SpaceX’s website.
Today’s launch marked SpaceX’s third launch to a lunar surface and the first of several that will be launched by SpaceX’s Falcon fleet for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program this year, per @spaceX on X.
“CLPS landers are designed to provide insights into the lunar surface environment and the ability to test technologies,” reads a post from @spacex. “The missions launched as part of this program are the precursors to landing Artemis astronauts safely on the Moon with Starship’s Human Landing System, or HLS.”
Yesterday (Jan. 14), SpaceX launched its Transporter-12 mission, a dedicated smallsat ride share mission with 131 payloads onboard – including CubeSats, MicroSats and orbital transfer vehicles – from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California; to date, SpaceX has launched more than 1,100 payloads to orbit for 130+ customers across its Rideshare program, according to the Company.
