Space fans won't have to wait long for the big launches to begin in 2025. NASA is kicking off the new year with a major mission to the moon. The upcoming mission includes the Blue Ghost lunar lander from Firefly Aerospace and the Tenacious lunar rover from the Japanese company ispace and is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
Blue Ghost's main mission will be exploration. The lunar lander will launch and spend its first 8 hours making sure all its systems are working. From there, it will hang out in Earth's orbit for 25 days, taking measurements and waiting for the right time to launch itself onto the moon. After four days in transit, Blue Ghost will spend 16 days in lunar orbit collecting more data before descending to A major crisisone of the largest basins on the moon.
Blue Ghost's mission plan shows orbits around Earth and the Moon before landing on the lunar surface.
Once there, it will spend one lunar day – which is about 14 Earth days – making measurements with 10 NASA payloads. The instruments will measure subsurface thermal data, radiation levels and other planetary details. It will also measure regolith, which is dirt and sediment that often settles on airless planetary bodies like the Moon. Research on regolith will help mitigate dust on future lunar missions.
At the end of its mission, Blue Ghost will capture several images of the lunar sunset as night falls. The lander is not intended to return to Earth, so once night falls, the lander will have about 5 hours to perform its final operations before going offline. Firefly Aerospace says that should be more than enough time to take photos of the sunset and send them back to Earth. Once it goes offline, that's the end of the Blue Ghost story.
The Tenacious mission plan will rendezvous with the Hakuto-R lunar lander before carrying out its tasks.
Along with Blue Ghost, it will also be sent by NASA Space's Tenacious lunar rover to the surface of the planet. It is one of the smallest planetary rovers ever designed and wouldn't look out of place in RC car a toy store. It measures 26 centimeters (10 inches) tall and weighs just 5 kilograms (11 pounds).
Tenacious is part of the second Resilience mission. The first mission took place in 2022 with the similarly small Hakuto-R lander.
Tenacious will launch with Blue Ghost, then Tenacious will land on the Atlas Crater in Mare Frigoris and link up with the Hakuto-R lander. So the data will be sent back to Earth.
Tenacious will use its equipment to conduct food production experiments, detect radiation, conduct water electrolysis and collect regolith.
When was Blue Ghost and Resilience launched?
– says NASA the launch is scheduled for a six-day window in mid-January, but exact dates have yet to be confirmed.
When the launch happens, it will lift off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SpaceX will provide a Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket for the launch.
Can I stream the launch of Blue Ghost and Resilience?
Yes. A NASA representative told CNET that the launch will be live streamed. No official announcements yet, but keep an eye out Page about upcoming NASA events for more details as they are released. We will update this article when we learn more.
What are the mission charges?
In all, there will be 15 total payloads — the elements of the spacecraft dedicated to producing and transmitting mission data — bound for the moon. Five of them go with Tenacious and 10 with Blue Ghost.
Blue Ghost Loads:
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Lunar Instrumentation for Underground Thermal Exploration at Velocity (LISTER) by Honeybee Robotics
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Lunar PlanetVac (LVP) by Honeybee Robotics
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A next-generation lunar retroreflector (NGLR) from the University of Maryland
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Characterization of adherence to regolith (RAC) by Aegis Aerospace
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Radiation Tolerant Computer (RadPC) from Montana State University
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Electrodynamic dust shield (EDS) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center
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Heliospheric X-ray Imager of the Lunar Environment (LEXI) from Boston University, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and Johns Hopkins University
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Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) from the Southwest Research Institute
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Experimental Lunar GNSS Receiver (LuGRE) from the Italian Space Agency and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
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Stereo camera for the study of the lunar surface (SCALPS) from NASA Langley Research Center
Resistive loads: