Firefly Aerospace should soon reach the Moon, but it is not the only one. The private American company should see its Blue Ghost spacecraft take off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday morning from Cape Canaveral in Florida, which should land on the Moon in early March after forty-five days of transit. The mission, named “Ghost Riders in the Sky”, is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, launched in 2018 for a period of ten years and a total of $2.6 billion.
The objective of the CLPS is to help the American space agency “study the Earth’s closest neighbor”, in its words, to prepare the Artemis missions for the return of humans to our satellite, planned at the earliest in 2027. The mission of the companies selected by NASA, which delegates all stages from design to the implementation of operations, is therefore to conduct scientific experiments on the Moon, to test technologies that could be used during future missions and to demonstrate their capabilities in terms scientific, commercial development and lunar exploration.
Blue Ghost shows the way
In the case of Firefly Aerospace’s mission launched on Wednesday, the ten payloads on board Blue Ghost “will help advance lunar research”, according to the company, and will carry out several “one-of-a-kind” experiments: test regolith sample collection [poussière présente à la surface de la Lune]radiation-resistant computing, satellite navigation system and tools to limit lunar dust. All with the aim of “paving the way for humanity’s return to the Moon”.
Concretely, Blue Ghost will operate its payloads for one lunar day, or approximately fourteen Earth days. It will “then capture images of the lunar sunset and provide crucial data on how lunar regolith responds to influences from the Sun at dusk,” according to his company, and then operate for several hours during the lunar night.
An ambitious program
This Firefly Aerospace mission is the third in the CLPS program, but it could, if all goes well, be the first to be considered a total success. In January 2024, the Peregrine lander, from the company Astrobotic, left the Earth for the Moon but a fuel leak identified after launch ended its mission well before reaching our satellite. The company Intuitive Machines had become the first private company to land on the Moon, in February 2024, but its Nova-C craft had visibly landed on its side, making some of its missions more difficult than expected.
Currently, in addition to that of Firefly Aerospace, seven missions, including five in 2025, are planned as part of the CLPS program. By participating in the development of Artemis missions, companies taking part in CLPS are helping to achieve NASA’s longer-term space ambitions. Starting with “establishing a lasting presence on the Moon”, thus laying the foundations for “future manned missions to Mars”, dreams the space agency.
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