Two lunar landers on their way to the moon

Like turning back in time, before the Apollo missions, two robotic lunar landers were sent into space on Wednesday to land on the moon before NASA sends astronauts.  Have you heard this story before?

A Falcon 9 rocket, developed by SpaceX, was successfully launched on Wednesday at 1:11 a.m. EST from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The vehicle carried Blue Ghost, a lander developed by Texas-based Firefly Aerospace, and Resilience, a lander developed by Japan-based company ispace. The mission will also carry out experiments for NASA.

Firefly’s Blue Ghost commercial lander is designed to carry customer experiments to the Moon. For this first mission, the lander is carrying out 10 NASA science and technology investigations as part of the agency's CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative.

Now in space after a successful launch, Resilience and Blue Ghost will spend approximately 45 days in transit to the Moon before landing on the surface.

The Blue Ghost lander will test and demonstrate lunar subsurface drilling technology, regolith sample collection capabilities, global navigation satellite system abilities, radiation tolerant computing, and lunar dust mitigation methods.

The approximately 60-day mission for Blue Ghost will be operated from Firefly’s Mission Operations Center in Cedar Park, Texas. The mission will land near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium, a more than 300-mile-wide basin located in the northeast quadrant of the Moon's near side.

From Japan, the Resilience lander carries a micro rover named Tenacious that will travel to the surface of the moon.

The NASA scientific investigations and technology demonstrations aboard Blue Ghost will provide insights into the Moon's environment that will support future astronaut landings.

Firefly is targeting a lunar landing on March 2 for Blue Ghost.

Following the launch, NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said each scientific instrument and technology demonstration on these missions brings the agency closer to its vision.

"Each flight we're part of is vital step in the larger blueprint to establish a responsible, sustained human presence at the Moon, Mars, and beyond,” Melroy said.

Ten NASA payloads are flying on this mission under the CLPS program:

• Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity will characterize heat flow from the interior of the Moon by measuring the thermal gradient and conductivity of the lunar subsurface. It will take several measurements to about a 10-foot final depth using pneumatic drilling technology with a custom heat flow needle instrument at its tip. Lead organization: Texas Tech University
• Lunar PlanetVac is designed to collect regolith samples from the lunar surface using a burst of compressed gas to drive the regolith into a sample chamber for collection and analysis by various instruments. Additional instrumentation will then transmit the results back to Earth. Lead organization: Honeybee Robotics
• Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector serves as a target for lasers on Earth to precisely measure the distance between Earth and the Moon. The retroreflector that will fly on this mission could also collect data to understand various aspects of the lunar interior and address fundamental physics questions. Lead organization: University of Maryland
• Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC) will determine how lunar regolith sticks to a range of materials exposed to the Moon's environment throughout the lunar day. The RAC instrument will measure accumulation rates of lunar regolith on the surfaces of several materials including solar cells, optical systems, coatings, and sensors through imaging to determine their ability to repel or shed lunar dust. The data captured will allow the industry to test, improve, and protect spacecraft, spacesuits, and habitats from abrasive regolith. Lead organization: Aegis Aerospace
• Radiation Tolerant Computer (RadPC) will demonstrate a computer that can recover from faults caused by ionizing radiation. Several RadPC prototypes have been tested aboard the International Space Station and Earth-orbiting satellites but now will demonstrate the computer's ability to withstand space radiation as it passes through Earth's radiation belts, while in transit to the Moon, and on the lunar surface. Lead organization: Montana State University
• Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) is an active dust mitigation technology that uses electric fields to move and prevent hazardous lunar dust accumulation on surfaces. The EDS technology is designed to lift, transport, and remove particles from surfaces with no moving parts. Multiple tests will demonstrate the feasibility of the self-cleaning glasses and thermal radiator surfaces on the Moon. In the event the surfaces do not receive dust during landing, EDS can re-dust itself using the same technology. Lead organization: NASA's Kennedy Space Center
• Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager will capture a series of X-ray images to study the interaction of solar wind and the Earth's magnetic field that drives geomagnetic disturbances and storms. Deployed and operated on the lunar surface, this instrument will provide the first global images showing the edge of Earth's magnetic field for critical insights into how space weather and other cosmic forces surrounding our planet impact it. Lead organizations: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Boston University, and Johns Hopkins University
• Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder will characterize the structure and composition of the Moon's mantle by measuring electric and magnetic fields. This investigation will help determine the Moon's temperature structure and thermal evolution to understand how the Moon has cooled and chemically differentiated since it formed. Lead organization: Southwest Research Institute
• Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) will demonstrate the possibility of acquiring and tracking signals from Global Navigation Satellite System constellations, specifically GPS and Galileo, during transit to the Moon, during lunar orbit, and on the lunar surface. If successful, LuGRE will be the first pathfinder for future lunar spacecraft to use existing Earth-based navigation constellations to autonomously and accurately estimate their position, velocity, and time. Lead organizations: NASA Goddard, Italian Space Agency
• Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies will use stereo imaging photogrammetry to capture the impact of rocket plume on lunar regolith as the lander descends on the Moon's surface. The high-resolution stereo images will aid in creating models to predict lunar regolith erosion, which is an important task as bigger, heavier payloads are delivered to the Moon near each other. This instrument also flew on Intuitive Machine's first CLPS delivery. Lead organization: NASA's Langley Research Center

NASA has already awarded 11 CLPS deliveries and plans to continue to select two more flights per year.