The Blue Ghost Lunar Lander is now on its way to the Moon: Here’s what you need to know

NASA’s Blue Ghost lunar lander is on its way to the moon, soaring through space with a tiny lunar rover called Tenacious.

“After all the tests performed and mission simulations completed, we are now fully focused on execution as we look to complete our operations in orbit, gently touch down on the lunar surface and pave the way for humanity’s return to the Moon.” Jason Kim, CEO of Blue Ghost builder Firefly Aerospace, said in a statement.

The mission, called Ghost Riders in the Sky, was launched Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:11 a.m. ET. Blue Ghost separated from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 2:17 a.m. ET and established communications with Firefly’s Mission Operations Center in Cedar Park, Texas, at 2:26 a.m. ET.

Blue Ghost’s main mission will be research. It will hang out in Earth’s orbit for 25 days, taking measurements and waiting for the right moment to pounce to the moon. After four days in transit, Blue Ghost will spend 16 days in lunar orbit to collect more data before descending to Mare Crisium, one of the largest basins on the moon.

Once there, it will spend one lunar day — about 14 Earth days — taking measurements with 10 NASA payloads. The instruments will measure subsurface thermal data, radiation levels and other planetary details. Blue Ghost will also measure regolith, which is the loose dirt and sediment that often settles on airless planetary bodies like the moon. The regolith research will help with dust reduction on future lunar missions.

At the end of its mission, Blue Ghost will take some pictures of the moon setting as the night descends. The lander is not intended to return to Earth, so once night falls, the lander will have about five hours to perform its final operations before going offline. Firefly Aerospace says that should be more than enough time to take photos of the sunset and send them back to Earth. When it goes offline, that’s the end of the story for Blue Ghost.

The Tenacious rover is small but mighty

Along with Blue Ghost, NASA launched the Tenacious lunar rover from the Japanese company ispace. It’s one of the smallest planetary rovers ever designed, and it wouldn’t look out of place in an RC toy store. Persistent measures 10 inches tall and weighs only 5 pounds.

Tenacious is part of the second Resilience mission. The first took place in 2022 with the similarly small Hakuto-R lander.

Tenacious will land at the Atlas Crater in Mare Frigoris and establish a connection with Hakuto-R. This is how data will get back to Earth.

Tenacious will use its equipment to conduct food production experiments, detect radiation, perform water electrolysis and collect regolith.

What is the mission payload?

In all, there are 15 total payloads—the elements of the spacecraft dedicated to producing and relaying mission data—on their way to the moon. Five of them will be with Tenacious and 10 with Blue Ghost.

Blue Ghost payload

• Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER) from Honeybee Robotics
• Lunar PlanetVac (LVP) from Honeybee Robotics
• Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR) from the University of Maryland
• Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC) from Aegis Aerospace
• Radiation Tolerant Computer (RadPC) from Montana State University
• Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) from NASA Kennedy Space Center
• The Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) from Boston University, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Johns Hopkins University
• Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) from the Southwest Research Institute
• Lunar GNSS Receiver Experimental (LuGRE) from the Italian Space Agency and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
• Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) from NASA Langley Research Center

Resilience’s payload

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