A space double mission took place early Wednesday morning – two missions to the moon for the price of one rocket launch.
At 1:11 a.m. ET, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 lifted off from the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the Blue Ghost lander manufactured by Firefly Aerospace in Austin, Texas, and Japan Resilience lander manufactured by Ispace.
Why did the two lunar modules share the same rocket?
This was the result of an accidental arrangement by SpaceX, not a plan by Firefly or Ispace.
Firefly purchased a Falcon 9 transmitter to send its Blue Ghost lander to the moon. At the same time, to save mission costs, Ispace asked SpaceX to provide ride-sharing services, that is, hitching a ride as an auxiliary payload on a rocket launch that is roughly in the right direction to get its Resilience lander to the moon. It turned out to be the Blue Ghost’s trip.
“Putting them together is a no-brainer,” Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX’s NASA science mission manager, said at a press conference on Tuesday.
After the Falcon 9 rocket reaches orbit, the second stage fires again for a minute to deploy the Blue Ghost in an elliptical orbit around Earth about an hour after launch. About 1.5 hours after launch, the rocket stage was launched again for only one second to adjust the elastic deployment trajectory.
What are fireflies and blue ghosts?
Firefly Aerospace is one of the new aerospace companies that has emerged over the past few years. It has developed and launched a small rocket called Alpha on several occasions. In 2023, Firefly demonstrated that it could prepare and launch payloads for the U.S. Space Force in days — a capability the Department of Defense is looking to develop to be able to quickly replace satellites that come under attack.
Blue Ghost – named after a species of firefly – is a robotic lander developed by Firefly to carry scientific instruments and other payloads to the lunar surface.
The mission’s destination is the Mare Crisis, a flat plain formed by lava that filled and hardened the 345-mile-wide crater created by an ancient asteroid impact. The Mare Crisis is located in the northeastern quadrant of the near side of the Moon.
NASA will pay Firefly $101.5 million if it delivers 10 payloads to the lunar surface, or less if it doesn’t completely succeed. NASA’s payload includes a drill to measure the flow of heat from the moon’s interior to the surface, a motorized dust shield to clean glass and radiator surfaces, and an X-ray camera.
The lander will operate for about 14 days (the length of a lunar day) until nightfall at the landing site.
What is Ispace and elasticity?
This is Ispace’s second attempt to place a commercial lander on the lunar surface. Its Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander attempted to land near Atlas Crater on the near side of the moon. But the landing software was confused as it flew over the crater rim, which towers two miles above the surrounding terrain. The spacecraft ended up hovering far away from the ground after thinking it had landed, before crashing when it ran out of propellant.
Resilience, also known as the Hakuto-R Mission 2 lander, has essentially the same design as the Mission 1 spacecraft, but with a different payload. Ispace officials said they were confident the bug that caused the 2023 crash has been fixed.
Payloads aboard Resilience include a water electrolysis experiment from Japan’s Takasago Thermal Engineering, which splits hydrogen and oxygen molecules, and a small rover called Tenacious developed and built by Ispace’s European subsidiary.
Although it’s not a NASA mission, it will collect two soil samples – one scooped up by the rover and the other just soil that fell on the landing pad – and sell them to the agency for $5,000 each. mechanism.
These deals have no scientific value because the samples will remain on the moon. Rather, they are intended to help reinforce the U.S. government’s position that while no country on Earth can claim sovereignty over the moon or other parts of the solar system under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, countries and companies can own their resources and use them to Profit.
Resilience and Tenacious are also designed to run for 1 lunar day or 14 earth days.
Which mission will reach the moon first?
“Blue Ghost” should arrive on the moon first on March 2. trip. It will then orbit the moon for 16 days before attempting a landing 45 days after launch.
Elasticity will take a longer, winding path, using less energy and propellant, gradually stretching its elliptical orbit until the farthest point of the orbit reaches beyond the Moon. As the Falcon 9’s auxiliary payload, it needs to fly over the moon to get into the right position and then into lunar orbit.
The vehicle will land on a plain called the Frigoris Sea about four to five months after launch.
Both Blue Ghost and Resilience will likely be outdone by a spacecraft from Houston-based Intuition Machines, which isn’t expected to launch until the end of February. Despite its late start, it will take a direct, faster path to the moon.
Last year, Intuitive Machines sent its first lander, Odysseus, to the moon, a trip sponsored by NASA. Despite tipping over, it was still able to successfully connect to Earth.
Why are private companies going to the moon?
By hiring private companies, NASA hopes to send more equipment to the moon at a lower cost to conduct experiments and test new technologies. The second goal of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program (CLPS) is to launch a commercial industry that would otherwise not develop.
NASA officials expected failures along the way, and some have already occurred. Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology’s first CLPS mission suffered a catastrophic propulsion failure shortly after launch and never came close to the moon. During the second CLPS mission, the second Intuitive Robot lander overturned, preventing the scientific instruments on board from collecting the data they were intended to measure.
Ispace’s U.S. subsidiary is working with Draper Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the CLPS mission, scheduled to launch next year.
