spacetoday.net: Falcon 9 launches lunar landers for Firefly and ispace

Falcon 9 launches lunar landers for Firefly and ispace

Posted: Sun, Jan 19, 2025, 10:11 AM ET (1511 GMT)
Two commercial lunar landers are on their way to the moon after a launch overnight. A Falcon 9 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center at 1:11 am EST (0611 GMT). It deployed Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost 1 lander about 65 minutes after liftoff, followed nearly a half-hour later by ispace's HAKUTO-R M2 Resilience lander. Blue Ghost 1, scheduled to land on the moon in early March, is carrying 10 NASA payloads as part of the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Resilience, slated to make a lunar landing in four to five months, is carrying a set of payloads primarily for Japanese companies and a Taiwanese university. SpaceX paired the two missions to use the same Falcon 9 to maximize payload and reduce costs for Firefly and ispace.