The Blue Ghost lunar rover is now on its way to the moon: Here’s what you need to know

NASA’s Blue Ghost lunar probe is on its way to the moon, soaring through space with a tiny lunar rover called Tenacious.

“After all the tests conducted and mission simulations completed, we are now fully focused on execution as we strive to complete our in-orbit operations, lightly touch the lunar surface and pave the way for humanity’s return to the Moon,” Jason Kim, CEO director of Blue Ghost manufacturer Firefly Aerospace, said in a statement.

The mission, called Ghost Riders in the Sky, launched on Wednesday from NASA’Kennedy Space Center in Florida, at 1:11 a.m. ET. Blue Ghost separated from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 2:17 a.m. ET and established communication with Firefly’s Mission Operations Center in Cedar Park, Texas at 2:26 a.m. ET.

Blue Ghost’s primary mission will be research. He’ll hang out inside Earth’s orbit for 25 days he took measurements and waited for the right moment to pounce on moon. After four days in transit, Blue Ghost will spend 16 days in lunar orbit collecting more data before descending to A major crisisone of the largest basins on the Moon.

Once there, it will spend one lunar day — about 14 Earth days — taking measurements 10 NASA payloads. The instruments will measure subsurface heat data, radiation levels and other planetary details. Blue Ghost will also measure regolith, which is loose dirt and sediment that often settles on airless planetary bodies like the Moon. Researching the regolith will help mitigate dust on future lunar missions.

At the end of his mission, Blue Ghost will take some photos of the moonset as night falls. The lander is not intended to return to Earth, so after nightfall it will have about five hours to perform its final operations before going offline. Firefly Aerospace says that should be more than enough time to take photos of the sunset and send them back to Earth. After going offline, that’s the end of the story for Blue Ghost.

The Tenacious rover is small but mighty

Along with Blue Ghost, NASA launched A stubborn lunar rover from the Japanese company ispace. It’s one of the smallest planetary rovers ever built, and it wouldn’t look out of place in RC car a toy store. Tenacious is 10 inches tall and weighs only 5 pounds.

Tenacious is part of the second Resilience mission. The first took place in 2022. with the similarly small Hakuto-R lander.

Tenacious will land in Atlas Crater in Mare Frigoris and establish contact with Hakuto-R. This is how the data will be returned to Earth.

Tenacious will use its equipment to conduct experiments on food production, radiation detection, water electrolysis and regolith collection.

What are the mission payloads?

In all, there are a total of 15 payloads — the elements of the spacecraft dedicated to producing and transmitting mission data — bound for the Moon. Five of them go with Tenacious and 10 with Blue Ghost.

Blue Ghost payloads

• Lunar Subsurface Thermal Survey Instrument with Rapidity (LISTER) by Honeybee Robotics
• Lunar PlanetVac (LVP) by Honeybee Robotics
• Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR) from the University of Maryland
• Characteristics of regolith adhesion (RAC) by Aegis Aerospace
• Radiation Tolerant Computer (RadPC) from Montana State University
• Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center
• Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Camera (LEXI) from Boston University, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and Johns Hopkins University
• Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) from the Southwest Research Institute
• Experimental Lunar GNSS receiver (LuGRE) from the Italian Space Agency and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
• Stereo camera for studies of the surface of the lunar plume (SCALPS) from NASA Langley Research Center

Resilience Payloads