Two robotic explorers are set to land on the Moon, marking a new era in lunar exploration. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander and ispace’s Resilience lander will journey to the Moon aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, launching during a six-day window in mid-January.
The pair of landers will target different lunar regions: Blue Ghost will land in Mare Crisium, an ancient impact site with basalts dating back 2.5-3.3 billion years, while Resilience will touch down in Mare Frigoris, a region in the Moon’s far northern areas. Both landers are equipped with science instruments designed to test technologies for future human missions.
Blue Ghost will operate for a full lunar day, capturing images of a lunar sunset and collecting data on regolith reactions during lunar dusk. Its payloads will also assess lunar regolith sampling, radiation tolerance, and navigation systems. In contrast, Resilience will carry a small rover named Tenacious to explore the lunar surface.
ispace’s first mission, Hakuto-R M1 Lunar Lander, crashed on its surface in April 2023, but the company is determined to succeed with this second attempt. The two landers will follow different paths to the Moon: Blue Ghost will orbit Earth for 25 days before descending onto the lunar surface, while Resilience will use a longer route, including an elliptical transfer orbit and a low-energy transfer trajectory.
As NASA plans for a sustainable human presence on the Moon, more robotic visitors are expected to drop off payloads within the next few years. This historic mission marks a significant milestone in the commercial space industry’s efforts to deliver regular payloads to the lunar surface.
Source: https://gizmodo.com/two-lunar-landers-are-headed-for-ancient-impact-sites-what-you-need-to-know-2000541102