Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander heads for touchdown attempt on the moon

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A parade of lunar landers — developed by private-sector companies — are headed for the moon, part of a convoy of robotic spacecraft that NASA and its partner agencies hope will pave the way for astronauts to return later this decade.

Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is first up. The company’s 6.6-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) Blue Ghost lunar lander is on track to touch down on the moon’s near side at 2:34 a.m. CT (3:34 a.m. ET) Sunday.

Success is not guaranteed. In February 2023, another Texas-based space company, Intuitive Machines, became the first private-sector company to soft-land a vehicle on the moon, but broadly speaking, about half of all lunar landing attempts have ended in failure.

Jason Kim, Firefly’s CEO, told CNN in December that his company’s experience building rockets has given him a high degree of confidence in Blue Ghost’s propulsion systems.

“We’re using (reaction control system) thrusters that we’ve built, developed in-house, that are designed by the same people that design our rocket engines. That reduces risk,” Kim said. “All that gives us high confidence when we have people that do rocket engines really, really well — some of the best in the world.”

Well-functioning engines are important, as Blue Ghost will have to slow down its speed drastically without the help of a thick atmosphere. The lander must also rely on complex navigation and control software and hardware that will attempt to keep the vehicle properly oriented as it’s whizzing toward the treacherously crater-riddled lunar surface.

If successful, Firefly promises to deliver an exciting show. The lander is equipped with key sensors packed inside four legs that protrude from its box-shaped body.

“Several minutes will go by before we share all that information,” Kim said. But those sensors will be able to tell Firefly’s mission control within moments whether the landing attempt was successful, according to Kim.

“With all of our video cameras, we’ll also be able to have data that gets broadcast down to our mission operations center (in minutes),” he said. The first images from the mission should be delivered about a half hour after touchdown, Firefly told CNN.

Blue Ghost’s suite of science equipment

The mission is aiming to land near an ancient volcanic feature called Mons Latreille, which lies on the far eastern edge of the moon’s visible face just north of the equator.

The team chose the site because “it avoids large magnetic anomalies — (or interruptions) — on the lunar surface that could disrupt some of our payload measurements,” said Ryan Watkins, the program scientist for NASA’s Exploration Science Strategy and Integration Office, during a December briefing.

Blue Ghost comes equipped with 10 science instruments and technology demonstrations from NASA, some of which already began collecting data as the lunar lander traversed the roughly 239,000-mile (384,400-kilometer) void between Earth and the moon.

The equipment includes a device that’s testing out how GPS services might be used in orbit and on the lunar surface, a vacuum that will aim to suck up soil, and a telescope that will observe how Earth’s protective magnetic field, also known as the magnetosphere, responds to space weather.

Firefly is also expecting the spacecraft to deliver stunning images from its landing site.

During its 14 days of operations on the moon, Blue Ghost will photograph an eclipse, during which Earth will block the sun’s rays from the moon’s surface for about five hours. The vehicle is also expected to snap pictures of a phenomenon last witnessed by astronauts more than 50 years ago.

“There’s a phenomenon called the lunar horizon glow (scattered light caused by floating electrostatic particles) that only the Apollo 15 and 17 astronauts have seen with their eyes,” Kim said. “We’re going to be able to capture that in 4K-by-4K high-definition video and share that with the rest of the world.”

Firefly’s Blue Ghost will also continue collecting data for several hours into lunar night — when brutally cold conditions thrust the landing zone near Mons Latreille into shadow and temperatures could drop to as cold as minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 173 degrees Celsius).

The fall of lunar night has typically spelled the end for lunar landers. But NASA wants Blue Ghost to go for it. The space agency even upped the value of the contract it’s paying to Firefly — from $93 million to $101 million — in part so that the company could prepare the lander to survive such frigid temperatures, Kim said.

The Blue Ghost lander is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative.

The program is a concerted effort by the space agency to encourage the private sector to develop lunar landers in the hopes that their robotic exploration will pave the way for astronauts to return to the moon for the first time in 50 years under the Artemis program.

There are 14 companies currently able to bid on CLPS contracts, which provide money to carry out lunar landings. So far, two companies — Astrobotic Technology and Intuitive Machines — have attempted missions, but only the latter has managed a soft touchdown.

Astrobotic’s first mission last year failed shortly after reaching orbit because of propulsion issues. And while Intuitive Machines’ mission was largely successful, its lander tipped over on its side, limiting the length of time it was able to operate.

Blue Ghost is now in transit to the moon as two other private-sector vehicles are making their own approaches. Intuitive Machines’ second lander launched Wednesday and is heading for the moon’s south pole region. And a lander built by Japan-based company Ispace, which launched alongside Blue Ghost in January, will attempt a soft landing this spring — an effort to redeem the company’s failed first attempt in 2023.

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