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Firefly Aerospace nears lunar touchdown with Blue Ghost

lander

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Moon landing would be company's first, second for a

private firm

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Firefly one of many companies in modern moon race led by

US,

China

By Joey Roulette

WASHINGTON, March 2 (Reuters) - Firefly Aerospace's Blue

Ghost moon lander tightened its lunar orbit on Sunday before its

inaugural attempt at an uncrewed touchdown, nearing a pivotal

moment for one of a handful of private firms on the frontlines

of a global moon race.

The size of a compact car, the four-legged Blue Ghost is

carrying 10 scientific payloads and using 21 thrusters to guide

toward its scheduled 3:45 a.m. ET (0845 GMT) touchdown near an

ancient volcanic vent on Mare Crisium, a large basin in the

northeast corner of the moon's Earth-facing side.

Firefly is seeking to be the second private firm to score a

soft moon landing. Houston-based Intuitive Machines' ( LUNR )

Odysseus lander made a lopsided soft touchdown last year. Five

nations have made successful soft landings in the past - the

then-Soviet Union, the U.S., China, India and, last year, Japan.

Flight controllers at Firefly's Austin, Texas, headquarters

sent final commands to Blue Ghost as it lowered its lunar orbit,

flying about 238,000 miles (383,000 km) from Earth a month and a

half after launching atop a SpaceX rocket from NASA's Kennedy

Space Center in Florida.

The moonshot by Firefly, an upstart primarily building

rockets, is one of three lunar missions actively in progress.

Japan's ispace launched its second lander on the same rocket as

Firefly's in January, before Intuitive Machines ( LUNR ) embarked on its

second lunar mission on Wednesday.

Backed by NASA and its flagship Artemis moon program,

private companies are playing an outsized role in the modern

moon race with the hopes of stimulating a lunar market. Elon

Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin are building landers

to put U.S. astronauts on the moon as soon as 2027 for the first

time since 1972.

CROWDED MOON RACE

Missions like Firefly's Blue Ghost represent low-budget

precursor missions to the moon that will enable research into

the lunar environment before the U.S. sends its astronauts

there. Firefly has a $101 million NASA contract for the mission.

China, meanwhile, is making swift progress in its own moon

efforts, with its robotic Chang'e lunar program and plans to put

Chinese astronauts on the moon's surface by 2030. Also eyeing

the moon are U.S.-aligned Japan and India, which made its first

soft lunar landing in 2023.

Blue Ghost has two navigation cameras to spot hazards on the

lunar surface during its final descent and help the spacecraft

steer toward an ideal landing spot. The craft's four

carbon-composite legs have impact sensors that will trigger Blue

Ghost's engine to shutdown upon landing.

Two solar panels on the side and one of the top will power

the lander and its research instruments for a 14-day mission on

the moon, before the frigid lunar night brings temperatures as

low as minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 173 degrees Celsius).

Two onboard instruments will study the lunar soil and its

subsurface temperatures in experiments by Honeybee Robotics, a

firm owned by Blue Origin, which is developing its own lunar

lander to send humans to the moon for NASA's Artemis program

later this decade.

NASA's Langley Research Center has a stereo camera on board

to analyze the lunar dirt plumes kicked up by Blue Ghost's

landing engine, gathering data to help researchers predict the

dusty surface material's dispersal during heavier moon missions

in the future.

Research into landing plumes is a prominent technical issue

at the center of discussions on how countries such as the U.S.

and China will coexist on nearby areas of the moon. Plume

behavior is a factor behind the "safety zones" envisioned by

NASA's space safety pact, the Artemis Accords, to prevent

interference or damage to prospective neighbors on the moon.