The American company Firefly Aerospace will send a machine to the Moon in mid-January in the hope of repeating last year’s success of one of its colleagues, who managed to land the first American device there in more than 50 years. years.
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This mission, called “Ghost Riders in the Sky”, is carried out by this private company on behalf of the American space agency, NASA.
It is due to take off on January 15 at 1:11 a.m. (6:11 a.m. GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center, on the American east coast, NASA and the Texan company Firefly Aerospace announced on Tuesday.
Its objective is to place “10 NASA scientific instruments” on the lunar surface, to be able to “deepen our knowledge of the Moon and prepare for future human missions”, it is detailed.
The US space agency chose several years ago to commission private companies, including Firefly Aerospace, to send equipment and technology to the Moon – a program called CLPS intended to lower mission costs.
-Named Blue Ghost, the spacecraft developed by the Texan company will be sent into space by a Falcon 9 rocket from billionaire Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX.
After launch, the 2 m high and 3.5 m wide device will spend approximately 45 days in transit to the Moon. During this trip, various checks of the device will be carried out, specifies the company.
The craft will then attempt to land on the lunar surface. He must then stay there for around 14 days and carry out experiments.
It will also capture “images of the lunar sunset,” Firefly Aerospace reports.
The company won a $93 million contract in 2021 to carry out this mission.
This is the third mission carried out as part of NASA’s CLPS program. The first failed to reach the Moon and the second succeeded in February 2024.
But due to a failure in its navigation system, it had approached the lunar surface too quickly during its descent, and had broken at least one of its six feet.
