SpaceX Rideshare Lunar Lander Launch was This Morning

Back in mid-December, we learned that SpaceX was going to do a launch carrying two lunar landers from two different companies by the middle of this month.  That launch was at 1:11 AM ET this morning, Weds. Jan. 15, from the Kennedy Space Center side of the Cape, LC-39A.

The two landers are the next launches from companies that have been in the current round of lunar exploration.  The first is Firefly Aerospace in Texas which has launched the Blue Ghost lander.  The other company is Tokyo-based ispace which has launched its Resilience lander, a follow on to 2023's Hakuto R1, which they seem to refer to most often as Hakuto R2.

Both of these are taking low energy approaches to the moon, with ispace going with the lower energy path of the two.  They'll both take a long time to get there; they're just not taking the same approach.  

Blue Ghost will spend the next 25 days in Earth orbit, undergoing a variety of systems checks and gathering data with some of its 10 science and technology instruments — NASA gear that earned their spots onboard thanks to the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

The lander — Firefly's first-ever mooncraft — will then conduct an engine burn to head toward the moon. Blue Ghost will reach lunar orbit four days later and spend 16 days there before attempting a touchdown in Mare Crisium ("Sea of Crises") on the lunar nearside.

Mission profile for Firefly's Blue Ghost - image from Firefly Aerospace

"Following payload operations, Blue Ghost will capture imagery of the lunar sunset and provide critical data on how lunar regolith reacts to solar influences during lunar dusk conditions," representatives of Texas-based Firefly wrote in a description of the mission, which it calls Ghost Riders in the Sky. "The lander will then operate for several hours into the lunar night."

There is talk that the mission might be looking for a glow from the terminator on sunrise or sunset that was only reported by two of the Apollo missions.  Only six people in all of human history have seen this. 

While Blue Ghost is going to take 45 or 46 days or a month and a half to reach the moon, Resilience's mission will be more than twice that long.  Due to its energy-efficient path to lunar orbit, it will take four months to reach the moon - almost three times as long as Blue Ghost.

ispace will then spend another two weeks or so gearing up for the landing attempt, which will take place in the Mare Frigoris ("Sea of Cold") region of the moon's northern hemisphere.

ispace's Hakuoto-R mission 2 profile - image from ispace

Like Blue Ghost, Resilience is carrying five science and technology payloads that go back to NASA's CLPS program. 

Among this gear is a microrover named Tenacious, which was developed by the company's Luxembourg-based subsidiary. The 11-pound (5-kilogram) rover will deploy onto the lunar surface and collect lunar regolith as part of a contract with NASA. 

This will be something to keep an eye out for news about - during the next six months.  So far, I find nothing being reported as even slightly wrong with either mission - at less than 24 hours into that six months.  Only one privately built spacecraft has landed on the moon, Intuitive Machines Odysseus (quickly nicknamed Odie) almost exactly 11 months ago.  I'm hoping both of these add to the successes.