After obtaining a contract from the rocket startup Firefly Aerospace, the US space exploration technology company SpaceX’s “Falcon 9” and Falcon Heavy rockets are now planned for the next two and a half years. Launch at least 6 commercial lunar landers.
On Thursday, local time, Firefly Aerospace announced that it has signed a launch contract with SpaceX to use the latter’s “Falcon 9” rocket to launch its first Blue Ghost lunar lander, which is one of SpaceX’s lunar missions. The latest item in a series of contracts.
Join us on Telegram
It is reported that Firefly Aerospace was selected as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) project in 2021. This project will lay the foundation for NASA’s return of astronauts to the moon through the Artemis project in the next few years.
Currently, Firefly Aerospace is developing its own launch vehicle “Alpha” (Alpha), which is expected to be launched for the first time in the next few weeks. But this rocket is not powerful enough to bring Blue Ghost to the moon, so the company needs SpaceX to launch it.
Currently, SpaceX’s plan is to launch two Intuitive Machines Nova-C landers with the “Falcon 9” rocket in the first quarter of 2022 and the fourth quarter of 2022, launch the Masten Space System XL-1 lander in 2022, launch the Firefly Aerospace’s first Blue Ghost lander with the “Falcon 9” rocket in 2023, launch the Astrobotics’ first large Griffin lander with the Falcon Heavy rocket in the fourth quarter of 2023, as early as the fourth quarter of 2022 Started using the “Falcon 9” rocket to launch the first two commercial Hakuto-R lunar landers of the Japanese startup space.
