January 15, 2025

— Two private spacecraft are now on their way to attempting separate landings on the moon. One is expected to take 45 days to arrive in lunar orbit, while the other is expected to take four to five months — despite sharing the same ride off Earth.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched on Wednesday (Jan. 15) carrying Firefly Aerospace's first "Blue Ghost" and ispace's second Hakuto-R lunar lander, named "Resilience." Liftoff occurred at 1:11 a.m. EST (0611 GMT) from Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the same launch pad from where all of the Apollo moon landing missions began their journeys.

The launch marked SpaceX's 100th Falcon to fly from Pad 39A since leasing the site from NASA in 2014.

Just over an hour into the flight, Firefly's Blue Ghost separated from the Falcon's upper stage, deploying it into a highly-elliptical orbit around Earth. Roughly a half hour later, ispace's Resilience did the same.

From there, the two landers trajectories and goals diverted. Firefly, based in Texas, if flying its first mission in support of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), delivering science instruments to a point on the moon located just north of where Apollo 11 landed (Mare Tranquilitis) in 1969.

Resilience is carrying commercial and cultural payloads organized by ispace, a lunar resource development company with offices in Japan, Luxembourg and the United States. The lander and its micro rover "Tenacious" are headed to the far north of the moon's near or Earth-facing side where they will attempt to do what ispace's first mission in April 2023 failed to do: land softly on the lunar surface.

'Ghost Riders in the Sky'

Firefly's "Ghost Riders in the Sky" entire mission is expected to be complete before ispace's Mission 2 (M2) even reaches the moon.

Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 launch. Click to enlarge video in new pop-up window. (NASA)

"Why did we call it Blue Ghost?" said Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly Aerospace, replying to a question from collectSPACE. "It is named after a firefly species found in the southeast region of the United States. They are fireflies with a distinctive blue glow."

"Our mission name further plays into that theme and being one of the first commercial landers on the moon, Blue Ghost is essentially forging a highway to the lunar surface and that is going to enable regular access for both commercial and government customers, so it really plays well with 'Ghost Riders in the Sky,'" said Kim. "It is a nod to our team and this long trip."

Blue Ghost will remain in Earth orbit for 25 days before burning its main engine to set course for the moon. After another four days in transit and 16 in lunar orbit — if everything checks out as expected — the four-legged, 6.6-foot-tall by 11.5-foot diameter (2-by-3.5-meter) lander will autonomously touch down in Mare Crisium ("Sea of Crises") to begin two weeks of science.

Among the mission's NASA-provided payloads are a pneumatic drill to measure heat flow from the interior of the moon (LISTER); a lunar regolith sample collection demonstrator (Lunar PlanetVac); an experiment to compare the stickiness of lunar soil to different materials; an X-ray imager to study the interaction of solar wind and Earth's magnetic field (LEXI); a receiver to track GPS and Galileo navigation satellites throughout a full lunar day on the surface (LuGRE); and a stereo camera to capture the impact of the rocket plume on lunar regolith as the lander descends.

"We [also] put the names of our Firefly employees, as well as investors [on the lander]," Kim told collectSPACE. "That's something we're very proud of; to have your name associated with a vehicle that is going to land on the moon and stay there is quite inspirational."

Capacity to recover quickly

As it did with its first moon landing mission, ispace has set a list of 10 milestones for M2, two of which were completed by the time Resilience separated from its rocket. The lander will spend the next month flying as far as 930,000 miles (1,500,000 kilometers) away from Earth before looping back over a two to three month period to arrive at the moon. The approach, while slow, saves on fuel by following a low-energy trajectory.

On M1, an altitude sensor did not work as expected, which resulted in the lander crashing into the moon's surface. That glitch has been addressed and ispace expects the 7.5-foot-tall by 8.2-foot-wide (2.3-by-2.5-meter) Resilience to safely touch down in Mare Frigoris ("Sea of Cold") where it will begin operations, including deploying the rover to collect a sample of regolith (lunar soil) that NASA will subsequently purchase (but will not collect) under a 2020 contract.

Resilience and Tenacious will deliver to the surface a food production experiment, a deep space radiation probe and a water electrolyzer, as well as a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) memory disk loaded with 275 languages and other cultural data; a metal alloy plate from the toy company Bandai Namco styled after the "Charter of the Universal Century" from the anime series "Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn"; and artist Mikael Denberg's "The Moonhouse," a tiny home modeled after Sweden's red houses.

Among ispace's other partners in the M2 mission is Citizen Watches, which provided its proprietary Super Titanium alloy to be used in the construction of the Hakuto-R lunar landers and, prior to Wednesday's launch, unveiled a countdown clock that was displayed in public areas around Tokyo.

Race to be second (or third)

Depending on when Blue Ghost and Resilience begin their descents to the surface and if either or both are successful, they could become the second or third private spacecraft to land on the moon.

Or, one or both could be beaten back to the moon by the company that was first.

Houston-based Intuitive Machines landed its first Nova-C lander "Odysseus" in February 2024 on a mission that flew both NASA CLPS and commercial payloads. Odysseus impacted the lunar surface harder than planned and ultimately tipped over as a result, but still continued to function on its side.

The company's IM-2 mission, which is targeted to launch on a Falcon 9 in late February, will fly an updated lander, named "Athena," to Mons Mouton, located about 100 miles (160 km) from the moon's south pole. The mission will deploy NASA's TRIDENT drill and a mass spectrometer to delve up to 3 feet (1 meter) beneath the lunar surface, demonstrating the processes required to discover water and carbon dioxide.

IM-2 will also introduce mobility capabilities with Intuitive Machines' Micro Nova Hopper named "Grace" and a Lunar Outpost rover equipped with Nokia's Lunar Surface Communications System to test high-speed, long-range communications.

Expected to take only a week to reach the moon, Athena could land as soon as the first week of March, just around the same time that Firefly's Blue Ghost may be ready to do the same.