US-based Firefly Aerospace will be landing its Blue Ghost Mission 1 on the near side of the Moon on Sunday, March 2, 2025 at about 12:20 pm. The Blue Ghost lander is headed to Mare Crisium, a flat plain formed from lava that filled and hardened inside a 345-mile-wide crater carved by an ancient asteroid impact.
The mission is part of US’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
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How much does the Blue Ghost Mission 1 cost?
NASA had awarded Firefly a contract worth $93.3 million to deliver a total of 10 NASA-sponsored science and technology demonstration payloads to the Moon.
According to a report in The New York Times, NASA will pay $101.5 million to Firefly if all 10 payloads reach the lunar surface safely and a little less if the mission fails.
Blue Ghost Mission 1: Details
The mission was launched on January 15, 2025 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center along with Japanese space agency JAXA’s Resilience (Hakuto M2) mission.
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Blue Ghost went into orbit around the Moon on February 13. After a successful landing, the lander will conduct surface operations through one lunar daylight period (which is equivalent to roughly 14 days) and for some time after local sunset.
Specifications of Blue Ghost lander
The Blue Ghost lander consists of a box-shaped structural framework and four landing legs. It has two decks for mounting equipment and a 155 kg payload capacity.
Power is provided by solar panels that can be mounted on the sides of the spacecraft or deployed so they can protrude above the top deck, depending on the orientation of the spacecraft and the Sun.
The arrays provide 450 W nominal power and a peak of 650 W.
Thermal control is obtained using heat pipes, radiators, multi-layer insulation, and active heaters.
Communications at the surface allow 6 Mbps downlink average, 10 Mbps peak, and 0.2 kbps uplink average, 2 kbps peak.
