Tag: Firefly Aerospace
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As it happened: Firefly Aerospace completes first Moon landing with Blue Ghost
Firefly Aerospace accomplished its first attempt at landing on the Moon during the early morning hours of Sunday, March 2. Its robotic Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down on the lunar surface at approximately 3:34 a.m. EST (0834 UTC). Blog updates posted as they happened during the landing event.
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The Moon’s next robotic visitor is lining up for landing this weekend
CEDAR PARK, Texas—Early Sunday morning, while most of America is sleeping, a couple dozen engineers in Central Texas will have their eyes glued to monitors watching data stream in from a quarter-million miles away. These ground controllers at Firefly Aerospace hope that their robotic spacecraft, named Blue Ghost, will become the second commercial mission to…
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Rocket Report: SpaceX lands in the Bahamas; ULA tests modified booster
Welcome to Edition 7.32 of the Rocket Report! It’s true that the US space program has always been political. Domestic and global politics have driven nearly all of the US government’s decisions on major space issues, most notably President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to land astronauts on the Moon amid intense Cold War competition with…
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Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander arrives in lunar orbit
While in lunar orbit, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander captured an image of the Moon’s south pole on the far left. Image: Firefly Aerospace A robotic lander from Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is now in orbit around the Moon and going through its final preparations to land in the coming weeks. On Thursday, the company announced that…
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NASA’s CLPS program accelerates as two landers head for the Moon
As NASA focuses on returning humans to the Moon with Artemis, commercial providers are gearing up to deliver cargo to the lunar surface for NASA and other customers. Over a dozen uncrewed lunar missions are scheduled to be launched in the coming years, and more concepts are being developed globally. Two commercial lunar landers are…
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Two lunar landers are on the way to the Moon after SpaceX’s double moonshot
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Wednesday and deployed two commercial lunar landers on separate trajectories to reach the Moon in the next few months. The mission began with a middle-of-the-night launch from Kennedy at 1:11 am EST (06:11 UTC) Wednesday. It took about an hour…
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American, Japanese robotic landers share rocket launch to the Moon
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander pictured atop a bespoke payload canister, which encased ispace’s Resilience lunar lander prior to encapsulation inside SpaceX’s Falcon 9 payload fairings. Image: SpaceX For the first time in lunar exploration, two robotic landers, from two different nations launched to the Moon on one rocket. But despite Texas-based Firefly Aerospace…
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Falcon 9 launches two landers to the Moon on the same mission
SpaceX launched not one but two lunar landers to the Moon on the same mission, on the 100th launch from the same pad where the Apollo 11 crew launched to the Moon. A Falcon 9 successfully lifted off during an instantaneous window on Wednesday, Jan. 15, at 1:11 AM EST (06:11 UTC) from Launch Complex…
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Firefly Aerospace rakes in more cash as competitors struggle for footing
Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based company resurrected from bankruptcy, is riding high these days. In a few months, Firefly will attempt to become the second company to safely place a commercial lander on the Moon. Firefly’s Alpha rocket has reached orbit four times, and engineers are developing a larger medium-class rocket in partnership with Northrop Grumman,…
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Firefly Aerospace rakes in more cash as competitors struggle for footing
Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based company resurrected from bankruptcy, is riding high these days. In a few months, Firefly will attempt to become the second company to safely place a commercial lander on the Moon. Firefly’s Alpha rocket has reached orbit four times, and engineers are developing a larger medium-class rocket in partnership with Northrop Grumman,…