First attempt for Firefly Aerospace
On board, the Blue Ghost space robot, developed by the company Firefly Aerospace on behalf of the American Space Agency, NASA, and the Resilience robot from the Japanese company ispace.
Both hope to reproduce the feat achieved by the American company Intuitive Machines, which succeeded in landing a spacecraft on the lunar surface in early 2024, a world first for a private company. Until then, this perilous maneuver had only been successful by a handful of countries, starting with the Soviet Union in 1966.
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This will be the first attempt by Firefly Aerospace and the second by ispace, whose aircraft had failed to land softly in 2023.
Two to four months on site
The American space robot Blue Ghost will spend approximately 45 days in transit to the Moon and will be loaded with ten NASA scientific instruments. As for Resilience, it will take between four and five months to reach the star, and will carry, among other things, a rover, scientific instruments developed by other companies, and a model of a house made by a Swedish artist, Mikael Genberg.
The stated objective of ispace is to carry out technological demonstrations of several of these instruments on the Moon. The company failed in a previous attempt in 2023 when its lander crashed on the surface of the star.
“It is important to question ourselves, after having suffered failures and having learned from them,” confided last week the founder and CEO of ispace, Takeshi Hakamada. “Today we are proving our resilience,” he added on Wednesday before takeoff.
Research on lunar dust
On the American side, NASA plans to carry out “very diverse scientific research” using Blue Ghost, ranging from “understanding lunar dust to characterizing the structure and thermal properties of the interior of the Moon,” explained Maria. Banks, a senior scientist at the agency.
For example, NASA plans to drill the lunar soil and test technologies aimed at improving navigation, with the aim of deepening its knowledge of the Moon and helping to prepare “future human missions”.
The United States aims to send astronauts back there soon. After multiple postponements, NASA is now counting on a return by “mid-2027”.
Booming private market
While not being the first, Firefly Aerospace and ispace are seeking to consolidate their place in this booming market, with flights to the Moon increasing, both from governments and private companies.
“Each milestone achieved will provide valuable data for future missions and will allow the United States and its international partners to remain at the forefront of space exploration,” assured Jason Kim, boss of Firefly Aerospace.
Several years ago, NASA chose to entrust private companies, including this Texan company, with sending equipment and technologies to the Moon – a program called CLPS intended to lower the costs of missions.
This is the third launch carried out as part of this program, the first mission having failed and the second carried out by Intuitive Machines, having succeeded in landing, but from a bad angle.
Its Odysseus probe had approached the lunar surface too quickly during its descent, and had broken at least one of its six legs.
