Firefly Aerospace’s lunar lander is about to reach the Moon

CEDAR PARK, Texas – A Cedar Park company is one step closer to reaching the Moon. Firefly Aerospace announced that its engineers have completed environmental testing on its Blue Ghost Lunar Lander.

Firefly’s Blue Ghost Lunar Lander is currently being prepared for a mid-December land trip to Florida after spending August, September and part of October in California undergoing testing.

Flight director Jaxon Liebeck told FOX 7 the lander successfully showed it could survive a launch and operate in the harsh conditions of space.

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“Once it’s separated from the rocket and it’s in cislunar space, we can’t touch it. That’s true. So we have to make sure that every component is ready for the journey that he’s getting ready to take action,” Liebeck said.

The Blue Ghost Lunar Lander is currently back at Firefly’s main building in Cedar Park, where it was assembled. The next step brings the Texas-made lander to Florida. Once there, it will be attached to a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The goal is to launch Blue Ghost from Cape Canaveral around mid-January. There is a six-day launch window.

“All the engineers are extremely enthusiastic. We’re all very confident in the work that we’ve done and the fact that we passed all of our tests at JPL, all of these environmental tests, just added to that confidence and “We can’t wait until the lander ships in mid-December,” Liebeck said.

“Ghost Riders in the Sky” is the name of this upcoming mission. NASA selected Firefly in 2021 to help prepare the space agency for missions to return humans to the Moon.

“It’s amazing. It’s a little hard to believe in many senses because most of us want to live. When we went to the Moon in the ’60s, we only knew about it by looking at films and reading stories. And “We are doing our part by returning to the Moon, particularly by working with NASA as a client. We’re bringing their payloads back to the Moon, and we’re contributing like they did in the ’60s,” Liebeck said.

Blue Ghost, after takeoff, will orbit the Earth for 25 days. The journey to the Moon will last four days. After 16 days of lunar orbit, Blue Ghost will land.

The landing gear received a lot of attention during assembly after what happened in February to a lander built by a Houston company. This lander, known as Ulysses, fell on its side when it came in at an angle. Liebeck is confident that they will succeed in landing.

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“Absolutely. We designed footrests that have sort of hexagonal-shaped tubes inside that really cushion the shock. They crumble on purpose for any type of landing, whether we go a little more sideways or a little faster down. We We designed it so that the lander stays upright and we can withstand a lot of speed and force,” Liebeck said.

Ten onboard payloads will perform experiments including surface drilling and sample analysis. There’s even an experiment that could solve a mystery dating back to the time of Apollo.

“One of the astronauts on the Apollo missions described that lunar dust began to levitate during the night, and we could never prove it. And so, one thing Firefly tries to do at the end of the lunar day. ‘is proving it and capturing images of this dust floating as the sun passes below the horizon,’ Liebeck said.

From launch to landing, the entire mission is expected to last approximately two months. It will be controlled from Firefly’s Mission Operations Center, located in Cedar Park.

Blue Ghost will operate for 14 days on the lunar surface.