Double Lunar Mission: SpaceX Set to Launch Two Moon Landers on a Single Rocket

A dual space venture is poised to happen early Wednesday morning—two lunar explorations for the cost of a single rocket launch.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 is set to launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, transporting the Blue Ghost lander fabricated by Firefly Aerospace of Austin, Texas, alongside the Resilience lander from Ispace of Japan.

When is the launch taking place and how can I view it?

The launch is slated for 1:11 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday. Predictions indicate a 90 percent likelihood of favorable weather conditions.

SpaceX will stream the launch on the platform X starting approximately an hour before liftoff, around 12:10 a.m. NASA will initiate a live broadcast at 12:30 a.m. showcasing Blue Ghost and the payloads it carries for the agency, which can be viewed in the video player above. Ispace will broadcast its Resilience lander in English and Japanese, commencing at 12:20 a.m.

Should it be necessary, a backup launch window is available on Thursday at 1:09 a.m., although the weather outlook is not as promising.

Why are two lunar landers utilizing a single rocket?

This arrangement is a fortunate coincidence in the scheduling by SpaceX and was not orchestrated by Firefly or Ispace.

Firefly had arranged for a Falcon 9 launch to dispatch its Blue Ghost lander to the moon. Concurrently, in a bid to minimize mission expenses, Ispace requested SpaceX for a rideshare, essentially catching a lift as a secondary cargo on a rocket launch that was traveling in a direction suitable for its Resilience lander to reach the moon. This coincided with Blue Ghost’s mission.

“It was an obvious choice to combine them,” Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science missions at SpaceX, stated during a press briefing on Tuesday.

Once the Falcon 9 rocket achieves orbit, the second stage will reignite for a minute to deploy Blue Ghost in an elliptical orbit around Earth approximately one hour post-launch. Afterwards, the rocket stage will fire once again for just a second to modify the orbit for the deployment of Resilience about 1.5 hours after launch.

What are Firefly and Blue Ghost?

Firefly Aerospace is among the new space enterprises that have emerged in recent years. They have developed and launched a small rocket known as Alpha multiple times. In 2023, Firefly showcased its ability to prepare and launch a payload for the United States Space Force within days—a capacity that the Department of Defense aims to enhance in order to quickly replace satellites under threat.

Blue Ghost—named after a species of fireflies—is a robotic lander that Firefly created to deliver scientific instruments and other payloads to the lunar surface.

This mission is targeted toward Mare Crisium, a smooth plain formed from hardened lava in a 345-mile-wide crater created by an ancient asteroid impact. Mare Crisium is located in the northeast section of the near side of the moon.

NASA will compensate Firefly with $101.5 million if it successfully transports 10 payloads to the lunar surface, with a slightly reduced amount if not all objectives are met. The payloads from NASA include a drill to measure the heat flow from the moon’s core to its surface, an electrodynamic dust shield to cleanse glass and radiator surfaces, and an X-ray camera.

The lander is expected to function for approximately 14 days—the duration of a lunar day—until darkness envelops the landing area.

What are Ispace and Resilience?

This marks Ispace’s second attempt to position a commercial lander on the lunar surface. Its Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander sought to land near the Atlas crater on the near side of the moon. However, the landing software became disoriented as it passed over the crater rim, which is two miles higher than the surrounding landscape. Consequently, the spacecraft ended up floating far above the surface after mistakenly indicating it had landed, and subsequently crashed upon running out of fuel.

Resilience—also referred to as the Hakuto-R Mission 2 lander—maintains a similar design to the Mission 1 spacecraft, but features different payloads. Officials from Ispace expressed confidence that the errors leading to the 2023 crash have been resolved.

The payloads aboard Resilience include a water electrolyzer experiment, which separates hydrogen and oxygen molecules, from Takasago Thermal Engineering Company in Japan, along with a compact rover called Tenacious that was designed and constructed by Ispace’s European branch.

Although this mission does not fall under NASA’s purview, it will gather two soil samples—one collected by the rover, and the other simply soil that accumulates on the landing pads—selling them to the agency at $5,000 each.

These transactions lack scientific significance, as the samples will remain on the moon. Instead, they are intended to bolster the perception of the United States government that, while no country on Earth can claim sovereignty over the moon or other celestial bodies according to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, nations and corporations can own and profit from resources extracted from the moon.

Resilience and Tenacious are also designed to function for one lunar day, equating to 14 Earth days.

Which mission will reach the moon first?

Blue Ghost is expected to arrive at the moon first on March 2. Over the initial 25 days, it is intended to orbit Earth as the company activates and tests the systems of the spacecraft before…“`html

commencing a four-day expedition to the moon. Following this, it will circle the moon for 16 days prior to attempting a landing, which will occur 45 days post-launch.

Resilience will navigate a longer, meandering course that utilizes less energy and fuel, slowly extending its elliptical trajectory until the most distant point reaches beyond the moon. As a secondary payload on the Falcon 9, it must execute a flyby of the moon to achieve the proper alignment for capture into lunar orbit.

The craft is scheduled to touch down on a plain known as Mare Frigoris roughly four to five months following its launch.

Both Blue Ghost and Resilience could be outpaced by a spacecraft from Intuitive Machines in Houston, which isn’t set to launch until late February. In spite of its delayed initiation, it will take a more direct, speedier route to the moon.

Intuitive Machines successfully placed Odysseus, its inaugural lander, on the moon during a NASA-sponsored mission last year, managing to establish contact with Earth even after it tipped over.

What motivates private enterprises to land on the moon?

By engaging private companies, NASA aims to dispatch additional instruments to the moon at reduced costs to execute research and evaluate new technologies. Another goal of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, or C.L.P.S., is to catalyze a commercial sector there that would typically not arise.

NASA representatives anticipate setbacks along the journey, and indeed, that has been the case. The inaugural C.L.P.S. mission by Astrobotic Technology from Pittsburgh encountered a disastrous propulsion malfunction shortly after launch and failed to get anywhere near the moon. The tipping of the second Intuitive Machine lander during the next C.L.P.S. mission hindered the scientific instruments onboard from gathering the intended data.

The American branch of Ispace is working in partnership with Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass., for a C.L.P.S. mission slated for launch next year.