NASA’s Blue Ghost lunar plane is on its way to the moon, flying into space with a small lunar rover called Tenacious.
“With all the testing done and the mission simulations completed, we are now fully focused on execution as we seek to complete our on-orbit operations, gently touch down on the lunar surface and pave the way for humanity’s return to the Moon.” Jason Kim, CEO of Blue Ghost builder Firefly Aerospace, said in a statement.
The mission, called Ghost Riders in the Sky, launched Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:11 a.m. ET. Blue Ghost separated from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 2:17 a.m. ET and established communication with the Firefly Mission Operations Center in Cedar Park, Texas, at 2:26 a.m. ET.
Blue Ghost’s primary mission will be research. It will remain in Earth’s orbit for 25 days taking measurements and waiting for the right time to fly to the Moon. After four days in transit, Blue Ghost will spend 16 days in lunar orbit gathering more data before landing in Mare Crisium, one of the largest basins on the Moon.
Blue Ghost’s mission plan shows orbits around Earth and the Moon before the craft lands on the lunar surface.
Once there, it will spend one lunar day — about 14 Earth days — taking measurements with 10 NASA payloads. The instruments will measure subsurface thermal data, radiation levels and other planetary details. Blue Ghost will also measure regolith, which is the dirt and loose sediment that often settles on airless planetary bodies like the moon. Researching the regolith will help mitigate dust on future lunar missions.
At the end of his mission, Blue Ghost will snap some pictures of the lunar sunset as night falls. The Earth is not meant to return to Earth, so once night falls, the lander will have about five hours to perform its final operations before going offline. Firefly Aerospace says that should be more than enough time to take pictures of the sunset and send them back to Earth. Once offline, that’s the end of the story for Blue Ghost.
The Tenacious mission plan will have the rover rendezvous with the Hakuto-R lunar lander before completing its tasks.
The Tenacious Rover is small but mighty
Together with Blue Ghost, NASA launched the Tenacious lunar rover from the Japanese company ispace. It’s one of the smallest planetary rovers ever designed and wouldn’t look out of place in an RC car toy store. Tenacious is 10 inches tall and weighs only 5 pounds.
Tenacious is part of the second Resilience mission. The first took place in 2022 with the equally small Hakuto-R lander.
Tenacious will land in Atlas Crater on Mare Frigoris and form a bond with Hakuto-R. Thus the data will be returned to Earth.
Tenacious will use its equipment to conduct food production experiments, detect radiation, conduct water electrolysis and collect regolith.
What are the mission charges?
In total, there are 15 total payloads—the elements of the spacecraft dedicated to producing and transmitting mission data—directed to the Moon. Five of them will go with Tenacious and 10 with Blue Ghost.
NASA is kicking off 2025 with a major mission to the Moon.
Blue Ghost Charges
- Lunar Instruments for Rapid Subsurface Thermal Exploration (LISTER) by Honeybee Robotics
- Lunar PlanetVac (LVP) by Honeybee Robotics
- Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR) from the University of Maryland
- Regoli Adhesion Characterization (RAC) by Aegis Aerospace
- Radiation Tolerant Computer (RadPC) from Montana State University
- Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center
- The Heliospheric X-ray Imager of the Lunar Environment (LEXI) by Boston University, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and Johns Hopkins University
- The Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) from the Southwest Research Institute
- The Lunar GNSS Receiver Experimental (LuGRE) from the Italian Space Agency and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- Stereo Camera for Lunar Dust Surface Studies (SCALPSS) from NASA Langley Research Center
