How Firefly Aerospace Plans To Reach The Moon
Very recently Firefly managed to reach orbit for the first time ever during its To The Black Mission. This marked a massive milestone for the company and hopefully the beginning of consistent launch operations going forward. While exciting, Firefly Aerospace is not only working on Alpha and launches to low Earth orbit, but also an even more ambitious goal to land on the Moon.
For quite a while now Firefly has been working on a lunar lander named Blue Ghost. The mission was awarded by NASA as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program and will deliver a suite of 10 NASA-sponsored payloads, as well as other commercial payloads, to the lunar surface in 2024. As the launch date approaches, the company continues to make progress on the lander.
This includes different system reviews, general development, overall build, and more. All of which are contributing to a launch just around the corner. However, this goal brings up the question of how exactly does Firefly plan to reach the Moon and what does Blue Ghost have to offer. Here I will go more in-depth into the lunar lander, how it will reach the Moon, what to expect, and more.
Mission Progress
Despite Firefly preparing for its recent second orbital test flight and busy upcoming schedule, they have continued to work on Blue Ghost and released the occasional update. Back in early 2021, NASA originally awarded Firefly Aerospace the opportunity. Specifically, in February, NASA awarded Firefly $93.3 million to deliver a suite of ten NASA-sponsored science and technology demonstration payloads to Mare Crisium in the Moon’s Crisium basin. Firefly’s ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander will deliver the payloads to the lunar surface in 2024 in fulfillment of Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) task order 19D, managed by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The lunar lander is not only meant to transport but also support these payloads. In this case, the payloads will operate using lander-provided data and power resources through transit to the Moon, for an entire lunar day, and into the lunar night in Mare Crisium. This mission is intended to support scientific lunar research and will contribute to developing a sustainable presence on the Moon.
The next interesting update has to do with the launch vehicle and how Firefly plans to reach the Moon. While the company is confident in its Alpha rocket and its future, they decided to reach out to other companies for the launch vehicle. Just a few months after being awarded the contract from NASA, Firefly announced they had picked SpaceX as the launch provider for this unique mission. At the time, Shea Ferring, Firefly’s Senior Vice President of Spacecraft, said, “Firefly is excited to fly our Blue Ghost spacecraft on the highly reliable Falcon 9, which will deliver NASA instruments and technology demonstration payloads that support NASA science goals and NASA’s Artemis program. The high performance of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle permits a lunar transit using minimal Blue Ghost propulsion resources, thereby allowing the lander to deliver more than 150 kg of payload to the lunar surface.” In addition, Tom Markusic said, “Firefly is excited to leverage the performance and reliability of Falcon 9 to propel Blue Ghost on the first phase of its journey to the Moon.”
Just a few months later, Firefly completed some of its first official progress. In October 2021, Firefly announced the completion of the Critical Design Review (CDR) of their Blue Ghost lunar lander. This CDR paved the way for the construction of the Blue Ghost lander, which is scheduled to touch down in the Mare Crisium lunar basin in 2024. Tom Markusic pointed out, “This milestone marks another step in an aggressive schedule, and meeting it continues to showcase our spacecraft team’s ability to consistently deliver incredible work. This mission is a forerunner of what we see as a growing cadence of recurring data and payload service missions in cis-lunar space that will kickstart a lunar economy, and we’re honored to be demonstrating our ability to deliver these services for NASA and for our commercial customers.”
Finally, just earlier this year, Firefly completed the Integration Readiness Review of the lunar lander. During the review, held at the company’s headquarters in Cedar Park, TX, the team marked key progress milestones across multiple areas, including: Structures, Fluids, Propulsion, Core Avionics, Battery Production, Harness Production, FlatSat progress, MGSE, EGSE, and Facilities readiness to support lander integration. “Passing IRR indicates we have the necessary team, hardware, equipment, and documentation to support lander integration,” said Ray Allensworth, Blue Ghost Program Manager, who led the review process, “This team continues to overcome obstacles and perform at the highest levels, helping us pave our path to landing on the Moon in 2024,” she continued. This brings us up to date on Blue Ghost progress and the 2024 deadline.
Blue Ghost Overview
Now that we know more about the progress Blue Ghost has made and how it plans to reach the Moon, we can take a closer look at the lunar lander itself and what makes it so unique. One of the most important aspects has to do with the landing site. Firefly highlights that nearly any landing site on the near side of the Moon is achievable with their lander, including the lunar poles. Their baseline lunar capture orbit is near-polar, providing access to any surface location for nearly identical values. Communication back to the Mission Control Center (MCC) presently requires line of site to Earth, limiting transmission from polar regions to times when the Moon’s orbit about the Earth brings the relevant pole into view. However, the lander is designed to survive through communications blackout periods and to operate autonomously so long as the sun is shining. On-board processing and storage are used to operate PLs and store data gathered during blackouts so that they can be transmitted when communications become available again (usually after 8–20 days). In terms of the specific landing location, Mare Crisium has been the subject of previous lunar missions including the Soviet landers Luna 15, Luna 23, and Luna 24. In 2012, the NASA GRAIL mission confirmed and mapped a mass-concentration at the center of the basin. All of which had an impact on the decision to land here.
Blue Ghost is designed to operate for as long as it is illuminated, up to 14 days in most locations. There are two baseline lander configurations to accommodate power and thermal solutions at different latitudes. Mid and equatorial latitudes use three fixed solar arrays. For polar missions, the lander has less radiation area and accommodates longer operating periods at sites where extended periods of illumination are available. Extended operation at the poles is achieved through use of a deployable panel with a single-axis gimbal to track the Sun at any solar azimuth.
In terms of power, Blue Ghost provides nominal power services on the ground, in orbit, and on the lunar surface. Keep-alive power is provided to the payloads during launch if needed. The spacecraft also provides a signal to power on the payloads upon completion of In-Orbit-Testing (IOT) or upon landing on the lunar surface, as desired. In addition, power can be supplied continuously or in a duty cycle manner to the payloads from Earth orbit through lunar surface operation completion. You then have the very important deployment of payloads. Firefly points out they have significant experience with mechanisms, including thrust vector control actuators and mission critical fairing latches. Because they understand that each payload mission has unique requirements, they don’t offer a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, they work to develop a custom deployment mechanism for the customer’s payload, to integrate and validate the proprietary deployment mechanism, or to integrate industry standard in-orbit deployment mechanisms such as canisterized dispensers.
Firefly also highlights why this mission is so important. Recognizing the importance of the Moon to the future plans of both the US government and commercial industry, they are trying to lead a number of efforts to develop a future lunar architecture supporting advanced lunar surface capabilities. The Beta launch vehicle for example will permit dedicated Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI) launch (250 km × 380,000 km) for Blue Ghost, as well as for other landers of similar size, increasing launch flexibility and payload mass to the lunar surface. This vertically integrated capability from the surface of the Earth to the surface of the Moon will uniquely position Firefly in terms of ability to control schedule and prevent delays. However, for the time being, the company will use help from SpaceX to reach this ambitious destination.
Conclusion
Firefly Aerospace is trying to become a significant company within the space industry. After the recent successful orbital test flight, they are planning to not only increase launch cadence but also continue to work on missions to the Moon and more. Their Blue Ghost lunar lander has made some progress recently and is not far away from its scheduled launch. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.
