Firefly Aerospace’s lunar lander begins pre-launch environmental assessments

WASHINGTON — Firefly Aerospace has accomplished its first lunar lander and shipped the spacecraft to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for testing forward of a launch late this 12 months.

The corporate introduced Aug. 26 that its Blue Ghost lander is now at JPL for vibration, acoustic, thermal vacuum and electromagnetic interference and compatibility assessments, meant to substantiate that the lander operates as anticipated within the area surroundings and might survive the trials of launch.

“Firefly is proud to comply with within the footsteps of the Surveyor landers that had been examined in the identical JPL amenities,” Peter Schumacher, interim chief govt of Firefly Aerospace, stated in a press release, referring to the Nineteen Sixties-era NASA robotic lunar landers. “The intensive environmental testing we’ll full at JPL mixed with the strong testing we’ve already accomplished in home will additional scale back our danger posture and set us up for a profitable comfortable touchdown.”

If Blue Ghost passes these assessments, it is going to then be shipped to Florida for launch on a Falcon 9 at the moment scheduled for the fourth quarter of this 12 months. The lander will spend a few month in Earth orbit after launch to check programs earlier than going into orbit across the moon for 2 weeks forward of the touchdown try.

Firefly shipped the lander to JPL after finishing intensive testing by itself at its Texas headquarters. That included constructing a one-acre simulated moonscape and flying a drone over it to check the lander’s hazard avoidance and terrain relative navigation applied sciences, in addition to almost 100 drop assessments to display that Blue Ghost’s legs can deal with the shock of touchdown.

“This unimaginable Firefly crew carried out progressive testing approaches which might be setting a brand new commonplace within the business,” stated Jana Spruce, vice chairman of spacecraft at Firefly, within the assertion. “After all of the exhausting work, it’s bittersweet to see Blue Ghost depart our Texas-based facility, however we’re greater than prepared for this last check.”

Firefly is in line to be the third firm to try a lunar touchdown as a part of NASA’s Business Lunar Payload Companies (CLPS) program, after Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines. Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander suffered a propulsion malfunction hours after its launch in January, aborting the touchdown try. The Odysseus lander from Intuitive Machines landed on the moon in February on the IM-1 mission, though it fell on its facet, hampering its efficiency.

The mission, formally often known as CLPS Job Order 19D by NASA, will carry 10 science and expertise demonstration payloads. These payloads embrace an X-ray imager for learning the Earth’s magnetosphere, a lunar regolith sampling system and a receiver designed to detect GPS and Galileo navigation alerts at lunar distances.

Blue Ghost is deliberate to land at Mare Crisium within the northeastern quadrant of the close to facet of the moon. The spacecraft is designed to function for one lunar day, or 14 Earth days, and several other hours into the lunar evening.

Firefly has a CLPS activity order for a second lunar lander mission, Blue Ghost 2. That spacecraft will try a touchdown on the lunar farside in 2026 carrying an astrophysics experiment and two smaller payloads.

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