This year, the moon will be a busy place. Currently, there are three robotic spacecraft in space, aiming to be placed on the surface of the moon.
The first arrivals for the Blue Ghost Lunar Lander, built by Firefly Aerospace in Austin, Texas, will attempt to land early Sunday.
When will you land and how can you see it?
The landing is scheduled for March 2nd at 3:45am Eastern time. Firefly will begin live coverage of the landing at 2:20am from its YouTube channel.
What is Blue Ghost's destination?
This mission heads towards Mare Crisuium, a flat plain formed from lava filled and hardened within a 345-mile crater carved by the impact of an ancient asteroid. The mare chrysium is located in the northeast quadrant near the moon.
Do you take Blue Ghost on the Moon?
Lander carries a variety of scientific and experimental payloads to the moon, including NASA's 10. These include drills to measure the flow of heat from the interior of the moon to the surface, electrodynamic dust shields to clean the surfaces of glass and radiators, and x-ray cameras.
That cargo is part of the Commercial Moon Payload Service, or CLPS, which aims to place NASA equipment on the moon at a cheaper price than if NASA had built its own lunar landing aircraft. The agency will pay Firefly to $101.5 million if all 10 payloads reach the moon. It's a little less if the mission isn't fully successful.
Blue Ghost is the third CLPS mission to be released in the month. In 2024, the first one from Pittsburgh's Astrobotic failed after its release. The second was reached the moon last year by an intuitive machine in Houston, but it was turned over.
Why does landing happen so early?
Physics that reach a specific location in the solar system at a certain time may not always match when people are awake and watching. As the Blue Ghost Lander spacecraft gains its power from solar panels, the mission aims to land just after the dawn of a new moon day. And it turns out that the landing time will be 3:45am to reach the mare chrysium on March 2nd
“That's just when it happened,” said Ray Allensworth, program manager at Blue Ghost at Firefly.
The mission is to continue Earth Day for approximately 14 days until the moon's sunset.
How have you done your mission so far?
Blue Ghost played almost perfectly. For the first 25 days, the company turned on and checked the spacecraft's system and surrounded the Earth. It then fired the engine on a four-day journey to the moon and entered orbit on February 13th. The spacecraft camera recorded a close-up view of the lunar crater surface.
Along the way, a few small glitches appeared, but there were no major malfunctions. In most cases, mission controllers learned and adjusted how spacecraft behave in space environments.
“The thermal alarm can go off,” said Allensworth. “Things are getting a little hotter than planned and a little colder than planned on the vehicle. You look at that data and are you actually okay?”
What happened to the other Lunar Landers released on Blue Ghost?
The same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fired the Blue Ghost to Orbit at Resilience, a lunar landing erected by the Japanese ispace. The two missions are separate, but ISPACE wanted a ride share from SpaceX in search of a cheaper ride into the space. In other words, I hitched the ride as a secondary payload. It turns out to be a Blue Ghost launch.
Resilience began at the same time as the Blue Ghost, but requires a longer, more fuel-efficient route to the moon, and is expected to enter orbit around the moon in early May.
