Firefly Aerospace Wins Third NASA Moon Lander Contract

NASA’s Artemis program will eventually return humans to the lunar surface, but that’s just part of the effort to turn the Moon into a human outpost. The program will rely on myriad commercial payloads supplied by companies like Firefly Aerospace. NASA just announced a third mission for the company, which will see its Blue Ghost lander head to an important region of the Moon in 2028.
The newly awarded contract will send Firefly’s lander to the Gruithuisen Domes on the Moon’s near side. This part of the Moon is rife with what appear to be silica magma domes. They are similar to structures found on Earth, but scientists have been perplexed by how that could be the case. On Earth, similar structures form from granitic rocks as a result of plate tectonics and water—the Moon doesn’t have either of those.
After reaching this mysterious area, Blue Ghost will employ a suite of instruments to conduct geological analysis. NASA says the science payload will have a launch mass of 215 pounds (97 kilograms). The setup will include two instruments to probe the surface of the Gruithuisen Domes. A neutron spectrometer will scan for radiation and hydrogen to characterize the elemental composition. The Lunar Vulkan Imaging and Spectroscopy Explorer will consist of two stationary and three mobile instruments. NASA hopes to use them to gather data from the rocks of a dome, leading to a better understanding of the geological processes involved.
The mission will include a flexible camera system called Heimidall, which can take images from above the horizon to directly below the lander. There will also be a new type of solar panel system that needs to be tested on the Moon before it can be used on future missions. As we build infrastructure on the Moon, it would be good to know how natural and artificial radio sources will affect things, and Blue Ghost will have a tool for that, too. Finally, there’s a robotic arm that will collect samples from the surface using leftover hardware from the Perseverance rover.
Blue Ghost won’t be the only notable piece of hardware on the mission. Since the Vulkan instrument has mobile components, Firefly will have to provide a rover as well. Firefly isn’t building the rover itself but will instead work with an unnamed industry partner on that part of the mission.
Firefly’s first CLPS mission will launch no earlier than January 2025, reaching the Moon 45 days later. This will be followed in 2026 by a landing on the far side of the Moon. This CLPS contract actually contains two task orders, one for deploying the ESA’s Lunar Pathfinder and another for conducting surface operations. So far, the CLPS program has had mixed results. Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander failed to reach the Moon due to a fuel leak, and the Intuitive Machines Odysseus lander reached the Moon but tipped over after landing.
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