NASA <\/b>awarded Firefly Aerospace<\/b> a $179 million award to deliver six experiments to the Moon in 2028. This will be Firefly\u2019s third lunar mission and it is its fourth NASA task order.<\/p>\n
The mission is part of NASA\u2019s Commercial Lunar Payload (CLPS) initiative and will utilize Firefly\u2019s Blue Ghost lunar lander, its Elytra Dark orbital vehicle, and a rover from an industry provider. Firefly will deliver and operate six NASA instruments in the Gruithuisen Domes on the Moon\u2019s near side in 2028.<\/p>\n
This award comes as Firefly is preparing to launch its first Blue Ghost mission to the Moon on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in mid-January. Its second lunar mission is planned for 2026. <\/p>\n
In this mission profile, Firefly said the Elytra Dark transfer vehicle will deploy the Blue Ghost lander into lunar orbit and provide long-haul communications. Blue Ghost will land in the Gruithuisen Domes, deploy the rover, and support operations for more than 14 days on the lunar surface. NASA announced the demonstrations and experiments that will be onboard the mission, including a robotic arm to collect samples of lunar regolith. <\/p>\n
Firefly also said it has room for additional customers on the mission for orbital transfer or long-haul communications in cislunar space from Elytra, and lunar surface delivery. <\/p>\n
\u201cFirefly is dedicated to flying annual missions to the Moon for both government and commercial customers as we continue to pave the way for a lasting lunar presence,\u201d commented Brett Alexander, Firefly Aerospace chief revenue officer. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing growing interest from organizations looking to unlock the Moon\u2019s resources and build a robust lunar ecosystem, and we welcome additional partners to join us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NASA awarded Firefly Aerospace a $179 million award to deliver six experiments to the Moon in 2028. This will be Firefly\u2019s third lunar mission and it is its fourth NASA task order. The mission is part of NASA\u2019s Commercial Lunar Payload (CLPS) initiative and will utilize Firefly\u2019s Blue Ghost lunar lander, its Elytra Dark orbital […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49946"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}