A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched at 1:11 a.m. ET carrying two landers headed to the lunar surface that included technology from at least two Canadian companies.
The launch from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida included Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 lander along with the ispace’s RESILIENCE lander from Japan.
The launch is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program that delivers science investigations and technology demonstrations to the lunar surface.
The Canadian Space Agency provided funding to two companies through the Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program. This includes Canadensys Aerospace who have a 360-degree imaging system on the Blue Ghost lander and NGC Aerospace who have a global lunar navigation system on Blue Ghost as well.
Jean de Lafontaine, President and CEO of NGC who provided a navigation system said, “In line with NGC’s mission of shaping the future of autonomous exploration through collaboration, teaming up with Firefly provides us with the opportunity to test our state-of-the-art technology in the real environment of the Moon. This will pave the way for a technology that enables the precise navigation of lunar vehicles to high-value science targets without the need for external navigation aids.”
“NGC employs a very different approach to optical navigation compared to our own” says Firefly’s Blue Ghost Chief Engineer, Will Coogan. “This makes for an excellent opportunity to compare the two methods over a common dataset and learn how each method performs in both orbit and descent and at different sun elevations.”
Another Canadian company, Mission Control, who had a payload on the first ispace mission to the moon in 2022 which experienced a “hard landing,” could have a payload on the RESILIENCE lander. When contacted ahead of the launch, Mission Control said “no comment.” Should the ispace lander be successful this time at landing perhaps we’ll get a comment.
As to what’s next after launch, SpaceX provided the following updates on the mission.
“After it deployed into a lunar transfer orbit, the Blue Ghost lander began its approximate 45-day journey to the Moon, where it will land in Mare Crisium for NASA’s payloads to perform numerous science and technology demonstrations, including lunar subsurface drilling, sample collection, and X-ray imaging of Earth’s magnetic field to advance research for future human missions on the Moon and provide insights into how space weather impacts the planet.”
“After its deployment, the ispace RESILIENCE lander began its 4-5 month journey to the Moon. During their mission, ispace aims to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface, deploy its TENACIOUS Micro Rover, explore the Moon’s surface, and collect regolith.”
ispace confirmed that it had completed mission milestone 3 which established a communication link between the lander and Mission Control Center and confirmed “a stable attitude as well as start stable generation of electrical power in orbit.”
Firefly Aerospace reported that “on-orbit commissioning is now complete.”
More to come as the missions progress.
Note: Updated January 16 with new quotes.