KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. – In a two-for-one moonshot, SpaceX launched a pair of lunar landers early Wednesday for U.S. and Japanese companies looking to jumpstart business on Earth’s dusty sidekick.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched at 1:11 a.m. from Launch Complex 39A in Brevard County. The two landers rocketed away in the middle of the night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the latest in a stream of private spacecraft aiming for the moon. They shared the ride to save money but parted company an hour into the flight exactly as planned, taking separate roundabout routes for the monthslong journey.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 and ispace’s RESILIENCE lunar landers are now on their way to the moon.
It’s take 2 for the Tokyo-based ispace, whose first lander crashed into the moon two years ago. This time, it has a rover on board with a scoop to gather up lunar dirt for study and plans to test potential food and water sources for future explorers.
Lunar newcomer Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is flying 10 experiments for NASA, including a vacuum to gather dirt, a drill to measure the temperature below the surface and a device that could be used by future moonwalkers to keep the sharp, abrasive particles off their spacesuits and equipment.
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SpaceX said that “once deployed into a lunar transfer orbit” the Blue Ghost lander will begin its 45-day journey to the Moon, where it will land in Mare Crisium – a large, dark, basaltic plain.
Once on the moon, the lander – developed by Firefly Aerospace for NASA – will perform “numerous science and technology demonstrations, including lunar subsurface drilling, sample collection, and X-ray imaging of Earth’s magnetic field to advance research for future human missions on the Moon and provide insights into how space weather impacts the planet,” SpaceX said.
After it is deployed, the ispace RESILIENCE lander will start its 4-5 month journey to the Moon.
During their mission, ispace aims to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface, deploy its TENACIOUS Micro Rover, explore the Moon’s surface, and collect regolith.
Retired NASA astronaut Ron Garan is ispace’s CEO in the U.S.
“One of the experiments we have on board is to break water into hydrogen and oxygen,” Garan told News 6 reporter James Sparvero. “That really would open up the doorway to the entire exploration of the solar system if we were able to use those assets that are on the moon.”
Sticking the landing proved to be a difficulty a year ago for private companies Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, and a year earlier, the first lunar lander from ispace crashed on the moon.
Astrobotic didn’t even reach the moon, and while Intuitive Machines' lander did touch lunar dust, it tipped over and lost contact. “We did have, unfortunately, did not achieve a soft landing on our first mission,” Garan reflected. “The good news is, though, none of the hardware was the fault.”
Garan continued that the company grew from the failure.
“There was a lot of low-hanging fruit, a lot of lessons learned that we can pull from the first mission and fix that, and we have done that,” he said. “And so we’re very confident that if we face the same problems that we faced on the first mission, that we would be successful on this mission.”
This was the fifth flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched Crew-9, RRT-1, and two Starlink missions.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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