US company Firefly Aerospace to launch for Moon next week

Texas: Firefly Aerospace is gearing up for an exciting launch next week. They’re sending their Blue Ghost lunar lander to the Moon, which is a big deal! This mission is part of a NASA program that teams up with private companies to cut costs.

If all goes well, it’ll be only the second time an American robot has landed on the Moon since the Apollo days. Firefly announced that the launch is set for 1:11 a.m. EST on Wednesday, January 15, using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The Blue Ghost lander is pretty impressive, standing about 6.6 feet tall and 11.5 feet wide. It’s on a mission to deliver equipment for ten science projects to a volcanic area called Mons Latreille on the Moon. The journey will take around 45 days, and once it lands, it’ll operate for about two weeks.

Firefly got a $93 million contract from NASA back in 2021 under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. This program is all about getting new space companies involved in lunar missions, aiming to create a private economy on the Moon.

The first mission under this program didn’t go so well, as a lander from another company failed in January 2024. But another Texas company had a partial success, landing near the Moon’s south pole, even though it faced some issues after landing.

So far, only five countries have successfully landed spacecraft on the Moon: the Soviet Union, the U.S., China, India, and Japan. It’s a tough challenge, but Firefly is ready to give it a shot!