Blue Ghost Lander Progresses Through Checkouts

Blue Ghost Mission 1 lifts off from historic Launch Complex 39A. 55 years ago, the first humans to walk on the Moon departed from this same location.

One year has passed since NASA’s first two Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) landers made the first tentative steps towards extending commercial space exploration to the Moon.  While neither mission was a complete success, they taught NASA and its commercial partners several valuable lessons about developing affordable, modern lunar landers.  Now, the agency is ready to try again with two more closely-spaced missions.  Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 is the first of this year’s planned lunar landings.  It launched on January 15th atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.  Two weeks into its mission, Blue Ghost remains in an elliptical Earth orbit, where it continues to perform system checkouts.  Thus far, the mission appears to be proceeding according to plan, which is a positive omen for Firefly’s lunar ambitions.

Blue Ghost, seen here inside its cleanroom, measures 3.5 meters in width and 2 meters in height. Credit: Firefly Aerospace.

The CLPS program was created in 2018 by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.  Its driving purpose was to fund the development of small lunar landers built by start-ups.  One or more CLPS missions would launch every year, and they would serve as precursors for what eventually became the Artemis program.  Thomas Zurbuchen, the former leader of the Science Mission Directorate, frequently compared the missions to “shots on goal” in soccer.  Due to the low cost of the CLPS landers, which constricted system redundancy and pre-flight testing, NASA understood that not all of its payloads would make it to the Moon intact.  However, the probes which survived would theoretically produce more scientific discoveries than a single traditional spacecraft with an equivalent cost.

The moon rises as a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches a commercial satellite. Thanks to CLPS, the Moon is now the most frequent destination for interplanetary missions, with over a dozen landers scheduled to depart in this decade. Credit: Mike Killian/AmericaSpace.

To date, NASA has awarded CLPS contracts to five commercial vendors.  However, the task orders were not distributed evenly.  Firefly Aerospace, along with Intuitive Machines, is one of the clear winners of the competition to date.  Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander is scheduled to deliver three suites of payloads to the lunar surface during the coming years.  Each Blue Ghost mission will feature growing complexity and increasingly valuable scientific payloads.  If the current test flight is successful, the company will launch a radio telescope to the far side of the Moon next year.  The grand finale of the series will be a mission to the Gruithuisen Domes, one of the Moon’s most enigmatic geologic features.

Multiple remote cameras captured close-up views of Peregrine’s launch. Hours later, the spacecraft suffered a heartbreaking propulsion system failure.

Blue Ghost Mission 1 has the honor of opening a new phase in the CLPS program.  The first two missions in the program, Astrobotic’s Peregrine and Intuitive Machines’ IM-1, were announced in 2019.  Since the odds of success for these first landers were slim, NASA created a unique set of requirements for them.  A limited number of scientific instruments were placed on each lander to reduce NASA’s financial losses in the event of a crash.  To maximize the probability of success, NASA allowed the companies to select the payloads which they would carry and the landing sites which they would target.

In contrast, NASA selected the payloads and the landing sites for all subsequent CLPS missions.  Most of these task orders will also feature new, customized payloads rather than surplus instruments from previous NASA orbiters and landers.  Blue Ghost Mission 1 was the first of these higher-stakes missions to fly. 

Blue Ghost follows in the footsteps of last year’s IM-1 mission, which made a hard landing in the lunar south polar region. Credit: Intuitive Machines.

Like its contemporaries, Blue Ghost is a relatively small lander.  It can deliver up to 150 kilograms of scientific instruments to the Moon, which is sufficient for deploying drills, self-contained experiment packages, and small rovers.  With a height of 2 meters, it is similar in stature to a human geologist.  Its four landing legs span 3 meters in diameter, which reduces its probability of tipping over if it lands on a slope. 

Preparations for the first Blue Ghost mission began in 2021, when NASA awarded a $101 million contract to Firefly Aerospace.  Firefly launched the spacecraft less than four years later; in the realm of interplanetary missions, which can take up to 10 years to reach the launch pad, this is an impressive feat.  Immediately thereafter, the company began studying how to mount the mission’s ten scientific instruments to the lander.  The payloads were already under construction at various NASA centers and universities, and the first of them were completed in 2022. 

The mission patch for Blue Ghost Mission 1 draws inspiration from the iconic shape of interstate road signs. Credit: Firefly Aerospace.

Meanwhile, Firefly concentrated on Blue Ghost’s primary structure.  Firefly claims that it is more vertically integrated than other CLPS vendors, as it builds the entire lander itself [1].  Like other rockets and spacecraft, Blue Ghost is assembled inside a cleanroom at the company’s headquarters in Austin, Texas.  This gives Firefly more insight into the construction of its spacecraft, potentially reducing the probability of a failure due to quality control issues.  By October of 2023, Blue Ghost’s framework was beginning to resemble a lunar lander.  Last August, it was shipped to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which placed it inside a vacuum chamber and tested its reliability in the harsh thermal environment of space.  To date, Firefly is the only CLPS contractor which has elected to perform vacuum testing at JPL. 

The first Blue Ghost lunar lander is photographed shortly before it was encapsulated inside a Falcon 9 payload fairing. The smaller ispace Hakuto-R lander is stowed inside the canister beneath Blue Ghost. Credit: SpaceX.

With a flawless test campaign in the books, Blue Ghost next journeyed to Florida, where it was prepared for its departure from Earth.  Like other recent lunar landers from Israel, Japan, and the United States, Blue Ghost was propelled into orbit by SpaceX’s reliable Falcon 9 rocket.  Blue Ghost was mated to the veteran booster B1085, which was making its fifth flight.   Among its accomplishments, this booster had previously launched Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov on Crew-9 mission, the first NASA mission to rescue and return astronauts stranded in space. 

At just 1.7 tons (1,517 kg) in mass, Blue Ghost was a relatively lightweight payload.  Firefly was able to reduce the price of the launch by inviting ispace, a Japanese lunar exploration company, to launch their second lander on the same rocket.  The smaller Hakuto-R was encapsulated inside a cylindrical cannister and released following the separation of Blue Ghost.  Hakuto-R is following a more leisurely and fuel-efficient trajectory to the Moon, so it will not attempt its own landing for 4-5 months.

The full moon serves as a gorgeous backdrop for Falcon 9 booster B1085 and its two lunar lander payloads. Credit: SpaceX.

Blue Ghost Mission 1 got underway in the early morning hours of January 15th.  At 1:11 AM, B1085’s main engines ignited, lifting the rocket and its two Moon-bound passengers off the launch pad.  The booster performed flawlessly for two and a half minutes, then separated and performed a soft landing on the drone ship.  Meanwhile, the Falcon 9’s upper stage performed with characteristic precision during one of SpaceX’s most complex missions to date.  Over the course of 90 minutes, it performed three distinct burns to place Blue Ghost and Hakuto-R into their predefined parking orbits.

Following these maneuvers, Blue Ghost’s moment of truth arrived.  The hours which follow a spacecraft’s separation from its launch vehicle are among the most hazardous of any mission, as serious design flaws will often manifest themselves after a brief period in space.  This stress was particularly poignant for other early CLPS missions.  Peregrine was lost when one of its propellant tanks overpressurized during its first engine burn, while IM-1 nearly ran out of battery power due to a software issue which initially prevented it from pointing its solar arrays towards the Sun. 

SpaceX followed up the launch of Blue Ghost by placing the massive, 6.1-ton SpainSat communications satellite into geostationary orbit. Credit: Jeff Seibert/AmericaSpace.

Fortunately, it appears that Blue Ghost’s commissioning was comparatively uneventful.  According to the brief daily mission updates which Firefly has provided [2], no serious anomalies have emerged.  The lander successfully fired its main engine three days after launch.  The propulsion system performed well and demonstrated that it is ready for several critical maneuvers over the coming month. 

Compared to Apollo, Artemis, or Nova-C, Blue Ghost will spend a relatively long period in space before attempting to land on the Moon.  In total, 45 days will elapse between its launch and its landing.  Firefly selected this trajectory for two reasons.  It provides ample time to resolve any technical issues while the lander is still orbiting Earth.  Just as importantly, it enables Blue Ghost to launch at any point during a 5-day launch window and still land on the Moon at dawn.  This ensures that the solar-powered lander will be able to operate its instruments for a full lunar day. 

Firefly’s Blue Ghost flight control team poses for a group photo in the company’s Mission Control Center. Credit: Firefly Aerospace.

Despite the lack of major maneuvers or anomalies, the first two weeks of Blue Ghost Mission 1 have been far from quiet.  NASA and Firefly quickly activated all ten of Blue Ghost’s payloads and confirmed that they survived the vibrations and g-forces of launch.  Six of those instruments are capable of collecting measurements while the lander is in transit, and they are currently returning a steady stream of data to Earth.  Creating a plan to utilize payloads early is one invaluable lesson which NASA learned from the Peregrine and IM-1 missions.  Reserving time and bandwidth for early payload operations allows the instrument teams to collect some publishable data, even if the lander fails before reaching its destination.

The Sun is eclipsed by the Earth in this beautiful view from Blue Ghost Mission 1. The red tint is imparted by sunlight passing through Earth’s atmosphere. Credit: Firefly Aerospace.

The suite of cameras onboard the lander have also captured a handful of beautiful images.  Blue Ghost carries 12 commercial cameras built by Redwire.  They will monitor some of the payloads, help Blue Ghost navigate the lunar terrain during descent, and inspect the local geology of the landing site.  On January 21st, a camera on Blue Ghost’s top deck captured a rare eclipse of the Sun by the Earth.  As the Sun passed behind our planet, the atmosphere formed a brilliant red halo as the spacecraft was illuminated by the light of every sunrise and sunset happening in the world at once. 

The same phenomenon gives the Moon a distinctive red color during lunar eclipses.  While the Apollo 12 crew observed a similar eclipse during their journey home, they had run out of Hasselblad camera film by that point in the mission and were only able to capture the sublime event with a low-resolution video camera.  Al Bean, who was inspired to become an artist by the beauty which he witnessed during his ten-day voyage to the Moon, remarked, “This has got to be the most spectacular sight of the whole flight!” 

The full disk of the Earth was photographed by Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander while it loitered in its parking orbit. Credit: Firefly Aerospace.

Additionally, one of Blue Ghost’s cameras captured a magnificent view of the full disk of the Earth.  It harkened back to Jack Schmitt’s iconic “Blue Marble” image, which became one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th Century.  Blue Ghost’s view was dominated by the lush rainforests and the arid volcanic peaks of South America, and it features more clouds than its iconic predecessor. 

Looking ahead, the Firefly and NASA teams are preparing for a series of crucial maneuvers.  On or around Feburary 9th, Blue Ghost will fire its main engine to break free of Earth’s gravitational pull and head towards the Moon.  About four days later, it will perform another maneuver to place itself in lunar orbit.  Following these two engine burns, Blue Ghost will loiter in lunar orbit for 16 days while it waits for its orbit to align with its landing site in Mare Crisium.  The intended landing date is March 2nd; the time has not been disclosed.

A Firefly Aerospace infographic describes the 17 major milestones in Blue Ghost’s mission, beginning with its launch and ending with sunset at Mare Crisium. Credit: Firefly Aerospace.

Assuming that Blue Ghost lands successfully, it will collect scientific data for 14 days before it is silenced by the cold, dark lunar night.  The mission will culminate in the first visual observations of a lunar sunset.  To add to the excitement, Blue Ghost and Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 are currently scheduled to operate on the lunar surface simultaneously.  If one or both of the landers are successful, they will provide a much-needed victory for the CLPS program and usher in a new era of frequent, low-cost missions to the lunar surface.

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