NASA Set to Launch a Blue Ghost to the Moon

The space agency and contractors SpaceX and Firefly Aerospace are targeting Wednesday at 1:11 a.m. EST for Blue Ghost Mission 1—the maiden lunar voyage of Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander. The approximately two-month mission will fly a suite of NASA science equipment to study the Oklahoma-sized lunar basin. The data it collects could lay the groundwork for humans to return to the moon for the first time since the Apollo era on the Artemis III mission, scheduled for mid-2027.

Blue Ghost has piqued the interest of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which hires private space companies to send small landers and rovers to the moon.

Blue Ghost Mission 1, which Firefly has dubbed Ghost Riders in the Sky, was originally scheduled for late 2023 under a $93.3 million contract. But delays in the integration of the lander’s components forced the timeline to slip to 2025.

Blue Ghost Mission 2, scheduled for 2026, will deposit a grab bag of science instruments and deploy a satellite to orbit on the far side of the moon, which according to Firefly would be the farthest lunar landing site ever achieved. A third mission in 2028 would send Blue Ghost to the moon’s Gruithuisen Domes to help scientists understand how the unusual landmarks formed despite the absence of water and plate tectonics. Commercial customers can pay to send their own payloads on those flights.

Blue Ghost is named after the rare Phausis reticulata firefly which, like its name implies, glows bluish-white.

The pickup truck-sized vehicle will provide data, power, and thermal systems during the mission. Solar panels will generate energy, while antennae will beam communications—including high-definition video—straight to Firefly’s mission operations center in Texas.

The lander’s six carbon fiber tanks can hold more than 2,200 pounds of propellant. Its 20 thrusters, as well as its panels, struts, legs, harnesses, avionics, and batteries, were built with technology seen on the company’s launch vehicles, such as the Alpha rocket.

Eventually, Firefly will launch Blue Ghost with its own rockets and stack it atop the company’s Dark Elytra orbiter, which will drag the lander from Earth to cislunar orbit and remain in lunar orbit to aid communications with Earth.

Ghost Riders in the Sky, though, will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After separating from the booster, Blue Ghost will orbit the Earth for just under one month to gather momentum. It will then cruise for four days to lunar orbit, where it will circle the rocky satellite for about two weeks.

Blue Ghost’s toughest test will be the landing itself. About one hour before touchdown, its main engine will ignite, and the lander will use cameras to navigate obstacles, calculate speed and altitude, and pick the ideal landing spot as it coasts toward the surface.

It will then flip and fire all of its engines, decelerating from about 3,800 mph to 90 mph. After sensors on its legs trigger a main engine shutdown, smaller thrusters will pulse to slow the lander to about 2.2 mph. Firefly says it has completed dozens of drop tests to ensure its shock-absorbent legs hold up during the real deal.

Blue Ghost is expected to land near Mons Latreille, a four-mile wide mountain that sticks out like a sore thumb within Mare Crisium, in early March. There, it will spend one lunar day—or about 14 Earth days—studying lunar soil, geography, and weather.

The lander will carry 10 different NASA science instruments and technologies. For example, researchers will point lasers at a Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector to measure the moon’s distance from Earth and use a device called a Lunar PlanetVac to collect dust samples.

Other objectives include capturing photo and video of Blue Ghost’s landing, generating an electric field that could shield equipment from dust, and drilling down into the moon’s surface to study heat flow.

Each aspect of the test campaign is designed not only to study the moon, but to prepare NASA astronauts for their eventual return on Artemis III. The four-person crew—which will include the first woman and person of color to land on the moon—will travel to the lunar south pole. There, craters are perpetually shrouded in shadow, and researchers believe the extreme environment may hold frozen water.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has emphasized the importance of beating China, which plans to land taikonauts on the moon in 2030, to the site. Blue Ghost will land closer to the lunar equator. But the mission provides the space agency a stepping stone—as well as the potential to produce its own tantalizing findings.

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