Firefly, SpaceX and NASA Sending a Lander to the Moon Tomorrow

Firefly’s first lunar delivery is scheduled to launch tomorrow and will land near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium, on the northeast quadrant of the Moon’s near side.

Firefly is sending its Blue Ghost 1 lander to Mare Crisium. It will deliver 10 NASA science payloads to the lunar surface that will provide invaluable data to the lunar science community by addressing topics like regolith behavior, interior composition, and more.

Science Goals of Firefly Blue Ghost 1

Positioning and Navigation

Determining precise locations will be useful for everything from distance and elevation measurements to executing precision landings in a desired location. NGLR will establish lunar fiducial markers that will allow for current and future missions to precisely map to and locate specific areas of the Moon. LuGRE will collect signals from GPS and Galileo to assess whether these Earth-orbiting constellations can provide reliable navigation on the Moon.
Regolith Adherence

The Moon’s surface is quite the dusty landscape. As we design technologies and experiments for the lunar surface, regolith dust needs to be better understood and accounted for. Lunar dust could affect mechanical components, Earth-based material degradation, and human health, so we need to know how to best account for its effects. RAC, EDS, and LPV will help us study how lunar dust adheres to various materials and test the usage of electromagnetism to mitigate or prevent dust buildup.
Interior Heat Flow

The lunar interior’s heat flow can provide information applicable to many topics the science community is curious about. Data collected by LPV and LISTER could shed light on the history of the Moon’s formation, tidal interactions, crustal thickness, volatiles, and help humans plan future exploration, including using the Moon’s natural resources for human habitation.
Plume-Surface Interactions

Landing a craft on the Moon requires the craft to fire a reverse-thruster to slow its landing speed. This effect creates a large plume of dust. Believe it or not, we can learn quite a bit by studying these plumes, which is exactly what SCALPSS 1.1 will do. Furthermore, LISTER and LPV are pneumatic drilling and mining systems that can teach us about how gases and regolith interact. We can better design our landing procedures to be more effective (and make less of a mess) without compromising ground we’d like to study and it will teach us more about how gases and particles interact in reduced-gravity environments.
Earth’s Magnetosphere

LEXI will use X-ray imagery to study Earth’s magnetosphere — where Earth’s magnetic field interacts with solar winds. We can use this data to inform decisions on Earth about weather predictions, protect GPS and satellite connectivity, and prevent power outages caused by space weather. X-ray imaging will provide us with invaluable high-resolution views of Earth’s magnetosphere.
Temperature Structure and Thermal Evolution

LMS will help us study lunar crustal and magnetic fields while LISTER measures temperature and thermal conductivity, which will give us a better idea of the Moon’s internal structure, its thermal evolution, resource identification, applications across planetary science, and advancements in human lunar exploration.

Overhead view of a pockmarked landform on the Moon. Light catches the curved edge of the ridge on the left; its right edge is in shadow.

Firefly’s second lunar mission includes two task orders: a lunar orbit drop-off of a satellite combined with a delivery to the lunar surface on the far side and a delivery of a lunar orbital calibration source, scheduled in 2026.

A newly funded delivery in 2028 will send payloads to the Gruithuisen Domes and the nearby Sinus Viscositatus. The Gruithuisen Domes have long been suspected to be formed by a magma rich in silica, similar in composition to granite. Granitic rocks form easily on Earth due to plate tectonics and oceans of water. The Moon lacks these key ingredients, so lunar scientists have been left to wonder how these domes formed and evolved over time. For the first time, as part of this task order, NASA also has contracted to provide “mobility,” or roving, for some of the scientific instruments on the lunar surface after landing. This will enable new types of U.S. scientific investigations from CLPS.

NASA continues to advance its campaign to explore more of the Moon than ever before, awarding Firefly Aerospace $179 million to deliver six experiments to the lunar surface. This fourth task order for Firefly will target landing in the Gruithuisen Domes on the near side of the Moon in 2028.

As part of the agency’s broader Artemis campaign, Firefly will deliver a group of science experiments and technology demonstrations under NASA’s CLPS initiative, or Commercial Lunar Payload Services, to these lunar domes, an area of ancient lava flows, to better understand planetary processes and evolution. Through CLPS, NASA is furthering our understanding of the Moon’s environment and helping prepare for future human missions to the lunar surface, as part of the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration approach.

NASA will cover the Firefly launch tomorrow.

Firefly lunar scientific investigations with a wide range from characterizing Earth’s magnetosphere to understanding lunar dust and and characterizing the structure and thermal properties of the moon’s interior to demonstrating technologies that improve navigation and Computing and a higher radiation environment

The landing site so the landing site of this mission is within what’s called Mare Crisium and that’s a Basin located on the moon’s near side.
It’s a large Basin approximately 340 miles or 550 kilometers in diameter or width.
You can actually see it with your naked eye as you look up at the moon.