A Falcon 9 rocket will launch from Cape Canaveral Space Center in the coming days. It is interesting because two spacecraft are built by Firefly Aerospace and ispace under its head fairing. Their target is the Moon. We tell you about the flight plan and the technical design of these missions, as well as where you can watch the live broadcast of their launch.

Firefly Aerospace’s lunar mission
We will begin our story with the Blue Ghost spacecraft developed at the time when the owner of Firefly Aerospace was Ukrainian entrepreneur and philanthropist Max Polyakov. It is being launched under the CLPS program. As part of this program, NASA awards contracts to private companies to deliver various cargoes to the Moon. Firefly won the contract for this mission in 2021, worth 93.3 million dollars.

Blue Ghost has a height of 2 meters and a diameter of 3.5 meters. Its dry mass (excluding fuel) is 490 kg. It can deliver up to 150 kilograms of cargo to the lunar surface. The vehicle is powered by three solar panels capable of generating up to 400 watts of energy.
The Blue Ghost payload consists of ten NASA-provided payloads with a total mass of 94 kilograms. The mission’s scientific program includes studying the regolith and the structure of the lunar interior, experiments to pick up GPS signals on the Moon, determining the exact distance between the Earth and the Moon, testing a radiation-resistant computer and measuring the interaction of the Earth’s magnetosphere with the solar wind.
The first 25 days after launch Blue Ghost will be in Earth orbit. Then the device will make a four-day flight to the Moon. In the next 16 days, Blue Ghost will gradually reduce the height of its orbit, after which it will begin to land. The spacecraft should land near the volcanic formation Mons Latreille, located in the Mare Crisium. It was formed 3 billion years ago as a result of powerful eruptions, during which basaltic lava completely flooded the ancient crater.

The Blue Ghost is designed to operate for 14 days. The vehicle has no heaters and is unlikely to survive a lunar night. It should be noted that Firefly Aerospace has two more contracts from NASA, issued under the CLPS program. Missions under them will be launched in 2026 and 2028.
The lunar mission ispace
Unlike Firefly Aerospace, this will be the second attempt for Japan’s ispace to conquer the Moon. In 2023, it came close to becoming the first private company in history to land its vehicle on the Moon. Unfortunately, due to software bugs, the Hakuto-R probe crashed on the final leg of its descent. But ispace did not accept the failure and prepared a new lunar lander called RESILIENCE.

RESILIENCE measures 2.5 by 2.3 meters and has a dry mass of 340 kg. The apparatus is powered by solar panels. It has three main scientific loads:
- water electrolysis equipment from Takasago Thermal Engineering;
- a self-contained module for experiments on algae-based food production from Euglena;
- an open space radiation probe developed by the Department of Space Science and Technology at National Taiwan University.
It also carries a commemorative plate and a UNESCO-provided memory disk containing 275 Earth languages and “The Moonhouse” – a small red house in a white frame created by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg.
In addition to the loads listed above, RESILIENCE also carries the 5-kilogram Tenacious micro-rover developed by ispace-EUROPA. It is 26 centimeters high, 31.5 centimeters wide and 54 centimeters long. It is built from carbon fiber-reinforced plastic and is equipped with an HD camera and a shovel. Tenacious will use it to collect samples of regolith, which will then be photographed.

RESILIENCE will fly to the Moon on a different trajectory than Blue Ghost. It will take four months to reach lunar orbit. The landing site will be the Mare Frigoris. RESILIENCE is also designed to operate for one lunar day.
A live broadcast of the launch of Blue Ghost and RESILIENCE
The launch of the two lunar missions is scheduled to take place on January 15 at 1:11 a.m. EST (January 14 at 11:11 p.m. UTC). The event will be broadcast live by NASA on YouTube.
The ispace company will be hosting its broadcast of the launch.
The launch window to the Moon will be open for six days. If Blue Ghost and RESILIENCE fail to launch within that time frame, the next attempt will take place as early as February 2025.