Blue Ghost Lunar Lander Scheduled To Launch On January 15th

A lander hasn’t successfully reached nan aboveground of nan Moon’s cratered Mare Crisium region since nan Soviet Luna 24 probe landed location to cod samples successful August 1976. But SpaceX is prepping a motorboat that’ll nonstop not one, but 2 landers location connected Wednesday January 15th, Firefly Aerospace has announced.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is scheduled to motorboat astatine astir 1:11 AM EST, and will not only personification Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lander connected board, but too nan Resilience lander from nan Japanese robotic spacecraft diligent iSpace. It will return 45 days for nan waste and acquisition to recreation to nan Moon earlier it spends different 14 days carrying retired aboveground operations. There’s nary relationship connected whether we’ll beryllium tin to watch it return off.

The Firefly lander will proscription 10 NASA payloads to nan surface. They’re designed to measurement various particulate compositions, thermal properties, and electromagnetic activity of immoderate nan Moon and nan Earth. It’ll cod accusation for various applications, from improving landing and takeoff procedures to learning astir nan Moon’s resources and its history.

The alleged LEXI payload is peculiarly absorbing — it’s an x-ray instrumentality that tin publication nan Earth’s magnetic field. NASA will usage nan accusation to spot really our magnetosphere interacts pinch prima winds, which could yet thief accurately observe and measurement prima upwind patterns that root powerfulness outages connected Earth and interfere pinch outer and GPS systems.

This would beryllium NASA’s 2nd effort to deploy specified technology. It first launched nan device, past known arsenic STORM, into abstraction successful 2012. That 1 didn’t onshore connected nan moon, however, and wasn’t tin to get nan afloat image that LEXI’s wide-angle sensors will beryllium tin to capture.