27.11.2024
NASA Invites Media to Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 Launch to Moon
Credit: Firefly Aerospace
Media accreditation is open for the next delivery to the Moon through NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign for the benefit of humanity. 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.
Attendance for this launch is open to U.S. citizens and international media. International media must apply by Monday, Dec. 9, and U.S. media must apply by Thursday, Jan. 2. Media interested in participating in launch activities must apply for credentials at:
Credentialed media will receive a confirmation email upon approval. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online. For questions about accreditation or to request special logistical support such as space for satellite trucks, tents, or electrical connections, please send an email by Thursday, Jan. 2, to: ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov. For other questions, please contact Kennedy’s newsroom at: 321-867-2468.
Para obtener información sobre cobertura en español en el Centro Espacial Kennedy o si desea solicitar entrevistas en español, comuníquese con Antonia Jaramillo o Messod Bendayan a: antonia.jaramillobotero@nasa.gov o messod.c.bendayan@nasa.gov.
The company named the mission Ghost Riders in the Sky. It will land near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium, a more than 300-mile-wide basin located in the northeast quadrant of the lunar near side. The mission will carry NASA investigations and first-of-their-kind technology demonstrations to further our understanding of the Moon’s environment and help prepare for future human missions to the lunar surface, as part of the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration approach. This includes payloads testing lunar subsurface drilling, regolith sample collection, global navigation satellite system abilities, radiation tolerant computing, and lunar dust mitigation. The data captured also benefits humanity by providing insights into how space weather and other cosmic forces impact Earth.
Under the CLPS model, NASA is investing in commercial delivery services to the Moon to enable industry growth and support long-term lunar exploration. As a primary customer for CLPS deliveries, NASA aims to be one of many customers on future flights.
As part of its Artemis campaign, NASA is working with multiple U.S. companies to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface. These companies are eligible to bid on task orders to deliver NASA payloads to the Moon. The task order includes payload integration and operations and launching from Earth and landing on the surface of the Moon. Existing CLPS contracts are indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts with a cumulative maximum contract value of $2.6 billion through 2028.
Quelle: NASA
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Update: 1.12.2024
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Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission 1 to the Moon Readies for Launch
Firefly prepares to ship Blue Ghost to launch site after successfully completing environmental testing for mission to Mare Crisium with 10 NASA instruments
Cedar Park, Texas, November 25, 2024 – Firefly Aerospace, the leader in end-to-end responsive space services, today announced it successfully completed environmental testing on Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander ahead of its first mission to the Moon supporting NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. Firefly is now preparing to ship the lander to Cape Canaveral, Florida, in mid-December for launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during a six-day window that opens no earlier than mid-January 2025.
“Blue Ghost aced environmental testing and proved the lander is performing 100% as expected, which is a testament to the incredible Firefly team,” said Jason Kim, CEO at Firefly Aerospace. “This team has gone above and beyond with innovative testing approaches to ensure Blue Ghost is flight ready. While we know there will be more challenges ahead, I’m confident this team has what it takes to softly touch down on the lunar surface and nail this mission.”
Blue Ghost environmental testing was recently completed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in mid-October. During testing, the most extreme temperatures the lander will see during transit and on the Moon’s surface were replicated in a thermal vacuum chamber. Equipped with a solar simulator, JPL’s chamber enabled comprehensive functional and behavioral testing in a flight-like environment. The testing also included vibration, acoustic, electromagnetic interference and compatibility tests to further verify the integrated lander can withstand each flight environment during launch, transit, and landing on the Moon.
“With additional time in our schedule, we shipped Blue Ghost back to Firefly’s spacecraft facility in north Austin, Texas, where it has remained until we received the go to ship to the Cape,” said Jana Spruce, Vice President of Spacecraft at Firefly Aerospace. “In the meantime, the Firefly team has utilized this extra time to further conduct mission simulations and prep the team as we get ready to begin our first of many road trips to the Moon.”
Following launch and vehicle separation, Blue Ghost will begin its approximately 45-day transit to the Moon, allowing ample time to conduct robust health checks and begin payload operations on orbit. Blue Ghost will then land in Mare Crisium and operate payloads for a full lunar day (14 Earth days). As part of NASA’s CLPS initiative, the 10 payloads will perform numerous science and technology demonstrations, including lunar subsurface drilling, sample collection, and dust mitigation to advance research for future human missions on the Moon. Additional demonstrations, including X-ray imaging of Earth’s magnetic field, will also benefit humans on Earth, providing insights into how space weather impacts the planet.
Once payload operations are complete, Blue Ghost will capture the lunar sunset and provide critical data on how lunar regolith reacts to solar influences during lunar dusk conditions. Blue Ghost will then operate for several hours into the lunar night.
Blue Ghost Mission 1, named Ghost Riders in the Sky, is the first of three Firefly task orders supporting the NASA CLPS initiative as part of NASA’s Artemis campaign that serves to unlock the commercial lunar economy and enable a lasting lunar presence. The approximately 60-day mission will be operated from Firefly’s Mission Operations Center in Cedar Park, Texas. For more details on Ghost Riders in the Sky, visit https://fireflyspace.com/missions/blue-ghost-mission-1/.
About Firefly Aerospace
Firefly Aerospace is an end-to-end responsive space company with launch, lunar, and on-orbit services. Headquartered in central Texas, Firefly is a portfolio company of AE Industrial Partners (“AEI”) focused on delivering rapid, reliable, and affordable space access for government and commercial customers. Firefly’s small- to medium-lift launch vehicles, lunar landers, and orbital vehicles provide the space industry with a single source for missions from low Earth orbit to the surface of the Moon and beyond.
Quelle: Firefly Aerospace
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Update: 9.01.2025
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SpaceX launch of private Blue Ghost moon lander set for Jan. 15
The flight will include a second moon lander built by Japanese company ispace.
Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander during development and testing. (Image credit: Firefly Aerospace)
SpaceX and NASA are now targeting mid-January for the launch of the private moon lander "Blue Ghost."
Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander is now scheduled to launch to the moon at 1:11 a.m. EST (0611 GMT) on Wednesday, Jan. 15, taking off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission, known as "Ghost Riders in the Sky," will see Blue Ghost will ride to space aboard SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.
Livestream information has not yet been made available, but we will be tracking how to watch as NASA and SpaceX announce more details.
Tagging along for the flight will be the Resilience moon lander built by Japanese firm ispace. The company previously attempted a moon landing with its Hakuto-R lander, which ultimately crashed into the lunar surface in April 2023.
After launching, Blue Ghost will spend 25 days orbiting Earth before performing an engine burn to put it on a lunar transit trajectory that will take it to the moon. Once there, it will spend 16 days orbiting the moon while preparing for an autonomous landing on the surface. Its destination is Mare Crisium ("Sea of Crises"), a large basaltic plain some 460 miles wide (740 kilometers) formed by an ancient asteroid impact.
Within 30 minutes of touching down, if all goes according to plan, the lander should begin transmitting its first high-definition images from the lunar surface. Blue Ghost will only have 14 days on the moon before lunar night falls, depleting the lander of its solar power source — although its batteries should give it about five hours of power to capture lunar dusk.
Blue Ghost will carry 10 NASA-led science experiments and technology demonstrators to the lunar surface as part of the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program, or CLPS.
One of those experiments, known as the Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager, or LEXI, will observe Earth's magnetic field as it's bombarded by energetic particles blown from the sun on the solar wind. The experiment could help scientists watch processes occurring in the magnetosphere that they've never seen before.
"We expect to see the magnetosphere breathing out and breathing in, for the first time," said NASA's Hyunju Connor in a statement. "When the solar wind is very strong, the magnetosphere will shrink and push backward toward Earth, and then expand when the solar wind weakens."
Blue Ghost will also carry the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) instrument, a system of two cameras that will watch how the lunar surface reacts to being disturbed by Blue Ghost's engines during landing.
Other instruments will collect and study samples of moon dust (or regolith), measure the radiation environment on the lunar surface, and even study the electrical conductivity of the interior of the moon. One experiment, known as the Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS), will test a new method for repelling harmful lunar dust using an electrical charge.
As with other CLPS deliveries, Blue Ghost will also carry a prism-like laser reflector device that NASA will target with laser pulses shot from Earth. The experiment will help measure the distance from the Earth to the moon with sub-millimeter accuracy.
If it makes a successful landing, Blue Ghost will be the second CLPS mission to reach the lunar surface. The first, Intuitive Machine's IM-1 Odysseus mission, landed near the Malapert-A crater on Feb. 22, 2024. Odysseus was the first private spacecraft to ever land on the moon.
A month prior to Odysseus, the Astrobotic Peregrine lander attempted to reach the moon, but failed to reach its destination after a faulty valve caused a catastrophic propellant leak. Peregrine eventually fell back to Earth and burned up in Earth's atmosphere.
Quelle: SC
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Update: 10.01.2025
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Electrodynamic Dust Shield Heading to Moon on Firefly Lander
Defeating dust may be a small concern for most people on Earth, but for astronauts and spacecraft destined for the Moon or Mars, it is a significant hazard that must be mitigated. That’s why researchers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida are seeking innovative ways to use the Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) technology.
The EDS technology is headed to the Moon as part of the agency’s Artemis campaign. This innovative technology will be demonstrated on the lunar surface, where it will use electrical forces to lift and remove lunar regolith, or dirt, from various surfaces.
This dust-mitigating technology is one of 10 payloads aboard the next lunar delivery through NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, set to launch from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida Wednesday, Jan. 15, with Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Lander.
Using transparent electrodes and electric fields, EDS technology can lift and remove dust from a variety of surfaces for space applications ranging from thermal radiators, solar panels, and camera lenses to spacesuits, boots, and helmet visors. Controlling and removing the charged dust will be critical to the success of Moon missions under the agency’s CLPS initiative and Artemis campaign.
“For these CLPS and Artemis missions, dust exposure is a concern because the lunar surface is far different than what we’re used to here,” said Dr. Charles Buhler, lead research scientist at the Electrostatics and Surface Physics Laboratory at Kennedy. “Lunar regolith dust can get into gaskets and seals, into hatches, and even into habitats, which can pose a lot of issues for spacecraft and astronauts.”
Unlike dust particles on Earth, dust on the Moon’s surface is sharp and abrasive – like tiny shards of glass – because it hasn’t been exposed to weathering and elements like water and oxygen.
“Simply brushing lunar regolith across surfaces can make the problem worse because it’s also very electrostatically charged and highly insulating,” Buhler said.
Under the CLPS model, NASA is investing in commercial delivery services to the Moon to enable industry growth and support long-term lunar exploration. As a primary customer for CLPS deliveries, NASA aims to be one of many customers on future flights. EDS was funded by the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) Game Changing Development Program (GCD).
Quelle: NASA
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Update. 12.01.2025
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NASA Instrument on Firefly’s Blue Ghost Lander to Study Lunar Interior
LMS instrument aboard the Blue Ghost Lander heading to Mare Crisium in mid-January
As part of its Artemis campaign, NASA is developing a series of increasingly complex lunar deliveries and missions to ultimately build a sustained human presence at the Moon for decades to come. Through the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, commercial provider Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander will head to the Moon’s Mare Crisium for a 14-day lunar lander mission, carrying NASA science and technology that will help understand the lunar subsurface in a previously unexplored location.
Developed by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), NASA’s Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) will probe the interior of the Moon to depths of up to 700 miles, two-thirds of the way to the lunar center. The measurements will shed light on the differentiation and thermal history of our Moon, a cornerstone to understanding the evolution of solid worlds.
Magnetotellurics uses natural variations in surface electric and magnetic fields to calculate how easily electricity flows in subsurface materials, which can reveal their composition and structure.
“For more than 50 years, scientists have used magnetotellurics on Earth for a wide variety of purposes, including to find oil, water, and geothermal and mineral resources, as well as to understand geologic processes such as the growth of continents,” said SwRI’s Dr. Robert Grimm, principal investigator of LMS. “The LMS instrument will be the first extraterrestrial application of magnetotellurics.”
Mare Crisium is an ancient, 350-mile-diameter impact basin that subsequently filled with lava, creating a dark spot visible on the Moon from Earth. Early astronomers who dubbed dark spots on the moon “maria,” Latin for seas, mistook them for actual seas.
Mare Crisium stands apart from the large, connected areas of dark lava to the west where most of the Apollo missions landed. These vast, linked lava plains are now thought to be compositionally and structurally different from the rest of the Moon. From this separate vantage point, LMS may provide the first geophysical measurements representative of most of the Moon.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
The LMS instrument ejects cables with electrodes at 90-degree angles to each other and distances up to 60 feet. The instrument measures voltages across opposite pairs of electrodes, much like the probes of a conventional voltmeter. The magnetometer is deployed via an extendable mast to reduce interference from the lander. The magnetotelluric method reveals a vertical profile of the electrical conductivity, providing insight into the temperature and composition of the penetrated materials in the lunar interior.
“The five individual subsystems of LMS, together with connecting cables, weigh about 14 pounds and consume about 11 Watts of power,” Grimm said. “While stowed, each electrode is surrounded by a ‘yarn ball’ of cable, so the assembly is roughly spherical and the size of a softball.”
The LMS payload was funded and will be delivered to the lunar surface through NASA’s CLPSinitiative. Southwest Research Institute based in San Antonio built the central electronics and leads the science investigation. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provided the LMS magnetometer to measure the magnetic fields, and Heliospace Corp. provided the electrodes used to measure the electrical fields.
Under the CLPS model, NASA is investing in commercial delivery services to the Moon to enable industry growth and support long-term lunar exploration. As a primary customer for CLPS deliveries, NASA aims to be one of many customers on future flights. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the development of seven of the 10 CLPS payloads carried on Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander.
Quelle: NASA
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Update: 15.01.2025
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Ghost Riders in the Sky: Firefly's Blue Ghost mission to the moon set to launch from KSC
Ghost Riders in the Sky is what Firefly Aerospace and NASA are calling a mission set to launch to the moon this week, delivering 10 science and technology instruments onto the lunar surface.
Firefly's Blue Ghost lunar lander is set to launch no earlier than 1:11 a.m. Wednesday from Florida's Kennedy Space Center. The lander will be launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Pad 39A.
"2025 is definitely going to be an exciting year for lunar science," said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters during a late December NASA press briefing.
"NASA is contracting with American companies to take NASA scientific experiments, engineering tests and technology demonstrations from the Earth to the Moon, land them on the Moon, and then send our science data back to Earth," said Kearns. This is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
Simply put, NASA is working with private space companies to deliver science and technology payloads to the moon. Odysseus lunar lander, built by Intuitive Machines, was also part of that effort. Odysseus launched last February, making it to the moon before tipping over on the lunar surface. Last January, Astrobotic's Peregrine robotic lander malfunctioned in space, never reached the lunar surface, and burned up in Earth's atmosphere.
It will take 45 days for Firefly's Blue Ghost on its cruise to the moon. According to Firefly, this will allow for health checks and the beginning of science work.
It will reach the moon in early March, landing at a location known as Mare Crisium, which is a 300 mile-wide crater. According to Ryan Watkins, program scientist with Exploration Science Strategy and Integration Office at NASA headquarters, this mission "will allow NASA payloads to gather critical data about the moon's regolith, the geophysical characteristics, and interactions of solar wind and earth magnetic fields."
The science payloads will run for an entire lunar daytime, which is 14 days on Earth. This is the amount of time in the moon's orbit around Earth when sunlight is continuously reaching the lunar surface. By contrast, a lunar night is when the moon falls in the Earth's shadow. Lunar nighttime lasts for around 14 days as well. A full lunar day is approximately 28 days.
During the lunar sunset, the Blue Ghost lander will capture an image of the sunset, providing a look at how the lunar regolith is impacted by the Sun's influence at dusk.
The Firefly Blue Ghost lander is a bit bigger than the average car, measuring 6.6 feet-tall and 11.5 feet-wide. Firefly's website describes the Blue Ghost lander as "designed to stick the landing with shock absorbing feet, a low center of mass, and a wide footprint."
It will be carrying 10 payloads as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services, which include science and technology from different NASA centers, aerospace companies such as Blue Origin and Aegis Aerospace, universities, and research centers. These include:
- Stereo CAmera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) - NASA Langley Research Center
- Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) - Italian Space Agency (ASI) and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) - NASA Kennedy Space Center
- Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) - Boston University, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and Johns Hopkins University
- Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) - Southwest Research Institute
- Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER) - Honeybee Robotics (Blue Origin)
- Lunar PlanetVac (LPV) - Honeybee Robotics (Blue Origin)
- Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC) - Aegis Aerospace
- Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR) - University of Maryland
- Radiation Tolerant Computer (RadPC) - Montana State University
Blue Ghost will not be the only payload atop this Falcon 9 rocket. Sharing the ride to the moon will be HAKUTO-R Mission 2 for Japanese aerospace company, ispace. The mission is the company's lightweight lander known as RESILIENCE, which also aims to land on the moon, deploy a micro rover named TENACIOUS, and collect regolith samples. It is the company's second attempt after a failed effort in 2022.
Quelle: Florida Today
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On Wednesday, January 15 at 1:11 a.m. ET, Falcon 9 launched Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Also on board this mission was ispace’s RESILIENCE lunar lander.
This was the fifth flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched Crew-9, RRT-1, and two Starlink missions.
After it deployed into a lunar transfer orbit, the Blue Ghost lander began its approximate 45-day journey to the Moon, where it will land in Mare Crisium for NASA’s payloads to perform numerous science and technology demonstrations, including lunar subsurface drilling, sample collection, and X-ray imaging of Earth’s magnetic field to advance research for future human missions on the Moon and provide insights into how space weather impacts the planet.
After its deployment, the ispace RESILIENCE lander began its 4-5 month journey to the Moon. During their mission, ispace aims to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface, deploy its TENACIOUS Micro Rover, explore the Moon’s surface, and collect regolith.
Quelle: SpaceX