Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Image credit: Firefly

Blue Ghost, mission one, is now being prepared for launch to the Moon later this year under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

Built by Firefly, a private company in Cedar Park, Texas, Blue Ghost is being readied for final, pre-launch, environmental testing.

Image credit: Firefly/Inside Outer Space screengrab

“We’re still on track for a fourth quarter launch,” Risa Schnautz, Firefly’s communications director told Inside Outer Space.

Firefly has three current task orders through the NASA CLPS program, totaling more than $230 million in awards for Blue Ghost missions to the Moon in 2024 and 2026.

The CLPS undertaking is part of the NASA Artemis program to “reboot” the Moon with expeditionary crews with the intent to place a long-term base on the Moon.

Image credit: Firefly/Inside Outer Space screengrab

Moon manifest

Firefly’s first Blue Ghost mission is outfitted with 10 scientific instruments and technology demonstrations.

The payloads on Blue Ghost Mission 1 are built to carry out several first-of-its-kind demonstrations, according to Firefly’s website, such as testing regolith sample collection, radiation tolerant computing, and mitigating the problem of pesky lunar dust.

Here’s the Blue Ghost, mission 1 manifest and payload providers:

Image credit: Firefly/Inside Outer Space screengrab

— Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER): Honeybee Robotics (Blue Origin)

— Lunar PlanetVac (LPV): Honeybee Robotics (Blue Origin)

— Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR): University of Maryland

— Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC): Aegis Aerospace

— Radiation Tolerant Computer (RadPC): Montana State University

— Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS): NASA Kennedy Space Center

— Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI): Boston University; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Johns Hopkins University

— Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS): Southwest Research Institute

— Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE): Italian Space Agency (ASI); NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

— Stereo CAmera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS): NASA Langley Research Center

NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (LRO) LROC mosaic image shows Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium.
Image credit: ASU/NASA GSFC

Landing zone

To be lofted via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Blue Ghost will spend roughly 45 days in transit to the Moon, targeted for lunar touchdown in Mare Crisium.

Payloads onboard Blue Ghost are to operate for a lunar day – that’s about 14 Earth days.

Blue Ghost’s selected landing zone is near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium, in the northeast quadrant of the Moon’s near side.

That locale, although miles away, was also where the former Soviet Union’s Luna-24 landed, gathered up specimens, and rocketed them to Earth in 1976.

Luna-24 came to full stop at the northwestern rim of impact crater Lev, on the volcanic plains.

Firefly video

Given a successful spot landing, Blue Ghost-carried experiments are intended to gather data about the Moon’s topside covering of regolith, geophysical characteristics, and the interaction of solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field.

Firefly has posted an informative video on the upcoming mission, available on X at:

https://x.com/i/status/1818380477964706162