Falcon 9 rocket launches iSpace and Firefly Space lander on its way to the moon
SpaceX has launched the lunar landers of two aerospace companies from the USA and Japan. One of them is hoping for success at the second attempt.
Artist's impression of the Blue Ghost lander on the moon
(Image: Firefly Space)
Two new moon dwellers are on their way: on January 15, a Falcon 9 launch vehicle from SpaceX took off with two lunar landers from private companies in Japan and the USA on board.
The US space company's rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 7:11 a.m. our time. According to SpaceX, it was the 100th launch of a Falcon 9 from the rocket launch site in the US state of Florida. It took the landers from the US company Firefly Space and iSpace from Japan on their way to the moon. The first of the two landers is expected to arrive there at the beginning of March.
Blue Ghost orbits the Earth first
Firefly Space is calling the mission with the Blue Ghost landerGhost Riders in the Sky. It will initially orbit the Earth for 25 days. The flight to the moon will take around four days. After a further 16 days in lunar orbit, the landing in the Mare Crisium (Sea of Decisions) is planned for March 2.
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Blue Ghost has ten scientific instruments on board. These include the Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager (Lexi), developed at Boston University, which will take X-ray images of the Earth's magnetosphere to study the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth's magnetic field. The Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder will measure electrical conductivity and magnetic fields to draw conclusions about the structure and composition of the lunar mantle. The mission on the moon is scheduled to last 14 days.
Finally, the Lunar Pathfinder from the European Space Agency (ESA) is also part of the mission. This is a communications satellite that is to become part of ESA's Moonlight communications and navigation network. Blue Ghost is to deploy the satellite in lunar orbit.
iSpace hopes for success at the second attempt
iSpace from Japan is launching its second attempt at a moon landing with Hakuto-R Mission 2 (Japanese for “white rabbit”). Among other things, the Resilience lander has a food production experiment on board as well as a probe for measuring radiation. The flight to the moon is expected to take several months.
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Resilience will deploy the small rover Tenacious there. It has a scoop to take samples, which it will then photograph. The images will be sent to Earth for analysis. Tenacious will also place the artwork The Moonhouse by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg on the moon.
iSpace is hoping for a better outcome than the first attempt: the first Hakuto-R crashed in April 2023.
(wpl)
