Firefly Aerospace has received a potential $93.3 million task order from NASA under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative to bring a suite of 10 technology demonstrations and science investigations to the lunar surface in 2023.
NASA said Friday Firefly Aerospace will use its Blue Ghost lander to deliver 207 pounds of payloads to Mare Crisium, a more than 300-mile-wide basin on the Moon’s near side, to collect data and provide insights into the lunar surface’s geophysical characteristics and regolith properties, among others.
“The payloads we’re sending as part of this delivery service span across multiple areas, from investigating the lunar soil and testing a sample capture technology, to giving us information about the Moon’s thermal properties and magnetic field,” said Chris Culbert, manager of the CLPS initiative at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The payloads that will be delivered by Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost include the Regolith Adherence Characterization, Next Generation Lunar Retroreflectors and Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager.
The task order marks the sixth lunar delivery service award NASA made under the CLPS initiative.
