Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Blue Ghost-2 – a far side Moon lander.
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace

From the folks that landed their Blue Ghost lander on the Moon in March of this year.

Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas has announced a new commercial payload agreement on its Blue Ghost Mission 2 lander. Volta Space Technologies is providing a wireless power receiver, a technology demonstration for Volta’s planned lunar power network, called LightGrid.

LightGrid consists of a network of satellites in lunar orbit that would collect solar energy and transmit it via laser to receivers known as LightPorts that are integrated on customer landers, rovers, and infrastructure on the Moon’s surface.

Volta payload highlighted in this artistic rendering.
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace

The Volta payload hosted on Blue Ghost Mission 2 will be used to test and validate the first LightPort.

Far side landing

With the addition of Volta based in Montreal, Canada, Blue Ghost Mission 2 will now carry six payloads from five different countries, the US, UK, UAE, Australia, and Canada.

Three payloads are through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) and 3 additional government and commercial payloads.

Targeted to launch late 2026, Blue Ghost Mission 2 is set to land on the far side of the Moon.

Qualification testing for the fully stacked Blue Ghost and Elytra spacecraft structure is well underway for Blue Ghost Mission 2.

Blue Ghost-2 payloads.
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace

Spotting mineral deposits

“Elytra will first serve as a Blue Ghost transfer vehicle and communications relay for the mission and then remain operational in lunar orbit for more than five years to provide ultraviolet and visible spectrum imaging – a key capability to identify mineral deposits on the Moon’s surface, map future landing sites with higher fidelity, and enable cislunar situational awareness,” notes a Firefly Aerospace statement.

Blue Ghost-2 and Elytra.
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace

The Firefly Aerospace team has also begun assembling flight hardware and has accepted and tested a majority of the payloads at Firefly’s spacecraft facility.

For more details on the mission, go to:

https://fireflyspace.com/missions/blue-ghost-mission-2/