NASA has awarded Firefly Aerospace $176.7 million to deliver a pair of rovers and a trio of scientific instruments to the Moon as part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander is capable of delivering 240 kg to the lunar surface and will carry an autonomous NASA micro-rover, equipped with a neutron spectrometer to study the composition of the lunar regolit and able to collect images and telemetry.
It will carry a rover from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) too, also equipped with a spectrometer, cameras, and a radiation micro-dosimeter. The CSA rover is designed to explore permanently shadowed regions and survive at least one lunar night.
The plan is to land at the Moon’s South Pole region in 2029.
Firefly Aerospace is notable for being the first private company to successfully land a spacecraft on the lunar surface after its Blue Ghost lander touched down on March 2. The mission to the Moon’s near side was the corporation’s first delivery. A second mission, targeting a launch in 2026, includes a lunar orbit drop-off of a satellite combined with a delivery to the lunar surface on the far side. The third lunar mission is targeting a landing in the Gruithuisen Domes on the near side of the Moon in 2028.
The announcement of the award, Blue Ghost Mission 4, comes a day after Firefly confirmed the roadshow for its proposed initial public offering of 16,200,000 shares of common stock. According to the business, the price is expected to be between $35.00 and $39.00 per share.
It’s fair to say that NASA’s CLPS initiative has not gone entirely to plan. A leak scuppered Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine mission before it made it to the lunar surface. Intuitive Machines’ lander did make it down, but fell over. A second attempt also ended up in an unexpected attitude. Still, the missions are relatively inexpensive, and NASA is only set to embrace the commercial model further.
Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington, said: “Through CLPS, NASA is embracing a new era of lunar exploration, with commercial companies leading the way.”
Adam Schlesinger, manager of the CLPS initiative at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said: “CLPS deliveries to the lunar South Pole region will provide a better understanding of the exploration environment, accelerating progress toward establishing a long-term human presence on the Moon, as well as eventual human missions to Mars.” ®