Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium is excited to be monitoring the Moon missions launched in January from a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle: Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1, and the Japanese Space Agency's JAXA Resilience (Hakuto M2) mission. Blue Ghost Mission 1 is a lunar lander designed to deliver ten science payloads to the lunar surface. These missions launched on 15 January 2025. Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander is the first to touch down on the Moon of the two missions sharing that launch; Hakuto, which is carrying several cultural artifacts and which will land near the pole, is not scheduled to touch down until April.
To catch up on the Blue Ghost landing in the wee hours of March 2, 2025, you can view their newsreel update here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRjzPiczi0o
There will also be a live stream, starting about 3 am EST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChEuA1AUJAY
If you don't want to be awake for the actual landing, the live stream will still be accessible afterward like a normal video.
The science objectives of the mission are to investigate heat flow from the lunar interior, plume-surface interactions, crustal electric and magnetic fields. It will also take X-ray images of the Earth's magnetosphere. Technology tests in include regolith sampling, regolith adherence, Global Navigation Satellite System abilities, radiation tolerant computing, and dust mitigation using electrodynamic fields. Blue Ghost Mission 1 was selected through NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which will be supporting the Artemis program's future lunar operations. Forward to the Moon!
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