Blue Ghost 4: Two Rovers and crucial instruments soon to be deposited at the South Moon Pole

At the start of the year, an American aerospace company succeeded in its very first movingextremely difficult discipline if any. It is called Firefly Aerospace and was founded in March 2017 in Texas. She has been very successful since she has just won a NASA contract worth 177 million dollars. Called Blue Ghost Mission 4, this mission is part of the Lunar Payload Services sales program (CLPS, or useful commercial lunar charges), which aims to place scientific instruments and equipment on our natural satellite on behalf of the US space agency.

This mission will take place in 2029 and Firefly Aerospace will aim to deposit five useful charges at the southern pole of the Moon, a region particularly coveted for its potential resources in water ice. To carry out it, the private company will call on its orbital vehicle Elytra Dark. This will transport the Blue Ghost landing to the lunar orbit, then will remain in orbit to ensure the relay for communications between the earth and the place of establishment. Blue Ghost, he will land on the Régolith with his useful loads (we will come back to it).

Blue Ghost will transport two Rovers and three scientific instruments

If everything is going well, Blue Ghost Mission 4 should release two Rovers on the surface. The first, developed by Astrobotic, is called Moonranger, a micro-rover designed to explore water ice at the pole. Why ice? This could actually perpetuate the future presence of humans on the moon and be a considerable source of ergols for space vessels of the type… SpaceX starship.

The CSA Rover of the Canadian Space Agency will have the mission of exploring distant areas of the South Pole to study its ability to survive several lunar nights – one night corresponds to approximately 14 earthly days – and to explore regions permanently in the shade for a short duration. The other three useful charges planned are a mass spectrometer with ionization by laser ablation (LIMS), a network of laser retroreflectors (LRA) and stereoscopic cameras for the study of lunar plumes (scalpss). The Blue Ghost landing should provide communications, data and energy to these instruments for at least 12 days.

A long -term mission for Elytra Dark

The Elytra Dark vehicle will then remain in the moon orbit for more than five years to integrate the Lunar Imagery Service of Firefly. Telescopes aboard the space machine, operating in the ultraviolet and the visible spectrum, will photograph the surface to identify mineral deposits and precisely map the future Slunting sites for NASA. On this date, Firefly should have already deployed two other Elytra Dark vehicles in the Moon orbit: the first will be part of the Blue Ghost 2 mission on the hidden side in 2026, while the second will integrate the Blue Ghost 3 mission from the Mons Gruithisen Gamma in 2028.

Firefly Aerospace indicated that he still has room for other useful charges, both on Elytra Dark, which will remain in orbit, as on Blue Ghost on the surface of the Moon. Notice to amateurs …

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