CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Prepare yourself, moon: Two private landers have reached space and will shortly be on their way to you!
The two lunar landers — Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost and Resilience, constructed by the Japanese firm ispace — launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early this morning (Jan. 15) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on Florida’s Space Coast.
The Falcon 9 departed at 1:11 a.m. EST (0611 GMT) under a full moon and an unclouded, starry sky. The rocket’s first stage returned to Earth as anticipated, landing on SpaceX’s “Just Read the Instructions” drone ship, stationed miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, roughly 8.5 minutes post-liftoff.
The rocket’s second stage continued its trajectory upwards. If everything proceeds as intended, it will place Blue Ghost into a lunar transfer orbit approximately 65 minutes following launch and release Resilience 27 minutes thereafter.
This Blue Ghost mission, titled Ghost Riders in the Sky, is Firefly’s inaugural mission to the moon and is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. The lander is carrying 10 NASA research and technology payloads formulated to enhance the space agency’s comprehension of the lunar environment, as it strategizes to send astronauts back to the moon as part of the Artemis Program.
This marks the second mission that ispace has conducted towards the moon; the company’s Hakuto-R lander entered lunar orbit in March 2023 but unfortunately crashed during its landing attempt a month later.
Blue Ghost will spend 25 days in Earth’s orbit, carrying out system checks and commencing operations of some of its scientific payloads. It will then embark on a four-day journey to lunar orbit, where it will remain for an additional 16 days before attempting a landing in Mare Crisium (“Sea of Crises”), located in the northeastern section of the moon’s near side.
Upon landing, Blue Ghost will have around two weeks — a complete lunar day — for its scientific and research activities. The solar-powered lander’s 10 CLPS payloads represent a record for the lunar cargo delivery initiative. Numerous investigations are concentrated on inquiries into lunar regolith, or moon dust.
Resilience is adopting a highly efficient trajectory to the moon and will therefore arrive after Blue Ghost. If all proceeds as expected, the Japanese lander will set down in Mare Frigoris (“Sea of Cold”), in the moon’s northern hemisphere, approximately 4.5 months from now.
One of Resilience’s payloads is a microrover termed Tenacious, which will be deployed on the lunar surface following a successful touchdown. The rover is engineered to gather a sample of regolith as part of a distinct contract with NASA.
The launch of Blue Ghost and Resilience initiates a hectic year of lunar missions. The Houston-based company Intuitive Machines, which achieved a successful lunar landing with its first Nova-C lander, Odysseus, in February 2024, is set to launch its IM-2 mission as soon as next month.
Similar to its predecessor, IM-2 will carry NASA CLPS payloads, tasked with investigating the potential abundance of water ice at the moon’s south pole, among other objectives. Intuitive Machines’ IM-3 mission is projected to launch later in 2025, as will Griffin Mission One — a second attempt at landing on the moon from Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic, which faced failure on its initial moon mission in January 2024, with another lander named Peregrine.