Two commercial lunar modules have begun their journey to Earth’s satellite. With the help of a ‘Falcon 9’ rocket from space company SpaceX of technology billionaire Elon Musk, they took off from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in the American state of Florida and were successfully launched, live images from the American space agency NASA showed. This starts a year full of moon missions.
In addition to the two landers now dispatched, NASA says five more unmanned flights to the moon with soft landings on the surface are planned just as part of their programs. At the top of the ‘Falcon 9’ rocket was the ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander, developed and built by Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace.
The second lunar lander is ‘Resilience’ from the Japanese start-up ispace. The first is expected to arrive on the moon in about 45 days, the second in four to five months.
Space
“Blue Ghost” is intended to prepare manned lunar missions
The ‘Blue Ghost’, which is approximately two meters high and three meters wide, contains materials and instruments for ten NASA scientific investigations, which will explore the moon for approximately two weeks and prepare manned missions there. This includes how self-cleaning glass can prevent dust accumulation.
After two weeks, that is, a full day on the moon, the sun sets on the landing site. ‘Blue Ghost’ aims to capture images of this spectacle and provide data on how the loose rock on the moon responds to the sun’s influence at dusk. The mission called “Ghost Riders in the Sky” is the first moon mission of Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace – so far it has mainly developed launch vehicles.
“Resilience” also carries the mini vehicle “Tenacious”, which must explore the lunar surface and collect loose material with a shovel. Also on board is an art project by the Swede Mikael Genberg. It is a small red and white house, a typical Swedish house.
The landings are planned in two different parts of the moon: ‘Blue Ghost’ would land in the so-called ‘Mare Crisium’, a lowland with a diameter of about 500 kilometers. ‘Resilience’ governs a shallow sea of the moon, the ‘Mare Frigoris’.
Mission “Ghost Riders in the Sky”
Firefly Aerospace’s mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. With this program, the American space agency wants to collect as much knowledge as possible relatively cheaply and efficiently on its own way back to the moon by awarding contracts for moon landings to private companies and working with them.
NASA wants to put people on the moon again after more than fifty years. But the first manned take-off is repeatedly postponed. The goal now is for the first orbit to take place in 2026, with a landing on the moon in 2027.
Previous private missions were not as successful
Two missions were launched last year as part of the CLPS program. In January, the Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic sent the “Peregrine” capsule. Shortly after take-off, however, problems arose due to a malfunction in the propulsion system. The goal of a moon landing had to be abandoned.
In February 2024, the company Intuitive Machines achieved the first commercial landing on the moon with the lander “Nova-C”. However, the lander tilted when it landed. Moon landings are considered extremely technically demanding and often go wrong.
Source: Krone
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