The Moon is the place to be right now. Commercial spacecraft are preparing to land on the lunar surface, releasing various instruments and equipment to explore various regions of the Moon. Two of those robotic explorers embark on a journey to the Moon, each taking a different path to uncover its history and evolution while paving the way for future human missions.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander and iSpace’s Resilience lander are scheduled to travel to the Moon aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. The rocket will launch in a six-day window in mid-January. The two astronauts heralded a new era of lunar exploration as the commercial space industry ramps up its efforts to deliver payloads to the Moon regularly.
Both occupants target different lunar craters—flat, dark plains formed by ancient impacts on the Moon and later filled with mud and other material over the years. Firefly’s Blue Ghost mission is carrying 10 science instruments as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Resident guides Mare Crisium, an ancient space impact site that was once filled with basaltic mud. The basalts of Mare Crisium are between 2.5 and 3.3 billion years old, according to NASA.
After arriving at Mare Crisium, Blue Ghost will operate for a full lunar day (equivalent to 14 days on Earth), take pictures of the sunset, and collect data on how the regolith on the Moon responds to the sun’s influence during the lunar eclipse, according to Texas-based Firefly . A resident will work about seven hours a night on the Moon.
Blue Ghost’s payloads are designed to test samples of lunar regolith, radiation tolerance, a global navigation system based on the Moon, and other technologies to inform future missions.
Tokyo-based iSpace is preparing its own mission to the Moon. The Resilience lander will carry a small rover, called Tenacious, to an area called Mare Frigoris located in the northern reaches of the Moon. It is also equipped with scientific instruments, mainly from Japanese space enterprises, designed to explore the lunar surface.
This marks the second spaceflight attempt to land on the moon, following a less-than-successful first attempt. In April 2023, the Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) Lunar Lander landed on the Moon and crashed on the surface. The Hakuto-R M1 carried both commercial and government payloads, including a small, two-wheeled manoeuvrable robot from the Japanese space agency.
Although the two programs will be launched on the same rocket, they will follow a different path to the Moon. Firefly’s Blue Ghost will remain in Earth orbit for about 25 days before entering lunar orbit, where it will spend 16 days before attempting to touch down on the Moon’s surface, according to SpaceNews. Stabilization, on the other hand, will follow a much longer route to the Moon, first operating in an elliptical transfer orbit before using a lunar flyby to a low-power transfer trajectory that will enable it to attempt a slow landing. The first Japanese mission to the Moon took about four and a half months to reach the surface.
It may not be a race to the Moon, but the lunar surface is expected to see more visitors drop payloads on its dusty surface over the next few years as NASA and other space agencies plan for a continued human presence on Earth’s satellite.
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