Two Private Landers Head to the Moon to Support Future NASA Missions

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday morning, carrying two private lunar landers aimed at supporting NASA's upcoming Artemis missions. The Blue Ghost and Resilience landers, developed by Firefly Aerospace from Texas and Japan's iSpace respectively, are designed to gather data on the Moon's environment and test new technologies for future manned missions.

The SpaceX launch and the contracts for these private landers come under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, an essential part of the Artemis moon exploration initiative, which aims to commence its first crewed mission in April 2026. Approximately 65 minutes after the Falcon 9's liftoff, the first stage successfully separated and landed back on Earth, while the second stage deployed Blue Ghost into a lunar transfer orbit, followed by the release of Resilience about 30 minutes later.

Blue Ghost will spend around 45 days traveling to the Moon, targeting a landing near a volcanic feature in the Mare Crisium basin. It carries 10 NASA-funded payloads that will perform environmental tests to study various aspects such as lunar dust, electric and magnetic fields, and satellite navigation signals.

In contrast, Resilience has a longer journey, following an energy-efficient, gravity-assisted trajectory that will take about 4-5 months to reach the Moon. It carries six commercial payloads, including a radiation probe, water electrolyzing device, food production experiments, and a camera-equipped Micro Rover to collect lunar samples. The collected samples will be the exclusive property of NASA to support the Artemis program, although plans for retrieval are not yet finalized.

Both landers will have approximately two weeks, equivalent to a full lunar day, to conduct their research before the extreme cold of the lunar night is expected to render them inoperative.

"This mission embodies the bold spirit of NASA's Artemis campaign, driven by scientific exploration and discovery," remarked NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy. "Each flight is a crucial step toward our goal of establishing a sustained human presence on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Every scientific instrument and technology demonstration brings us closer to realizing this vision."