SpaceX Launches Two Lunar Landers to Moon on One Rocket
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January 15, 2025 Hour: 11:56 am
The mission seeks to enhance understanding of the Moon’s environment and support future human missions to its surface.
On early Wednesday, SpaceX launched two robotic lunar landers developed by two countries to the Moon on one rocket.
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The two landers are the Blue Ghost lander from U.S. private aerospace company Firefly Aerospace and the RESILIENCE lander from Japanese firm ispace. The landers were launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at about 1:13 a.m. Eastern Time.
SpaceX confirmed the rocket’s main engine cutoff and stage separation. The Falcon 9’s first stage successfully landed on a droneship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander will spend about 45 days traveling to the Moon, aiming to land on the lunar surface in early March. It is targeted to land near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium, a basin approximately 550 km wide in the northeast quadrant of the Moon’s near side.
The Blue Ghost carries 10 NASA science investigations as part of the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration initiative. The mission seeks to enhance understanding of the Moon’s environment and support future human missions to its surface.
Among the experiments are tests of lunar subsurface drilling technology, regolith sample collection, global navigation satellite systems, radiation-tolerant computing, and methods for mitigating lunar dust. NASA noted that the mission’s findings could also benefit Earth by shedding light on how space weather and cosmic forces affect our planet.
Meanwhile, the Resilience lander from ispace has embarked on a four-to-five-month journey to the Moon. It aims to achieve a soft landing, deploy its TENACIOUS Micro Rover, explore the lunar surface, and collect regolith samples.
teleSUR/ JF Source: Xinhua
