en.Wedoany.com Reported - NASA has awarded Firefly Aerospace a $144 million CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) contract to conduct a rapid lunar mission using its "Blue Ghost" lunar lander. Firefly, headquartered in Cedar Park, Texas, stated that the lander's structural panels, support struts, and landing legs are manufactured using composite materials. This marks the company's sixth contracted lunar mission to date, aimed at demonstrating repeatable lunar surface access capabilities on an accelerated timeline.

The mission is scheduled for launch in 2028. Firefly will leverage the proven "Blue Ghost" lander design and operational experience to complete design, construction, testing, and delivery in approximately two years—half the timeline of the first "Blue Ghost" mission. During the mission, "Blue Ghost" will return to the lunar nearside, carrying three NASA science instruments: the Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA) for high-precision laser ranging; the Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS) for measuring the radiation environment; and the Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume Surface Studies (SCALPSS) to investigate plume-surface interactions during landing.

Firefly CEO Jason Kim stated that this latest contract helps demonstrate that commercial lunar deliveries can be fast, repeatable, and reliable—capabilities needed to achieve a permanent lunar presence and support NASA's lunar base plans and the Artemis program. He noted that as demand from NASA and commercial customers grows, the company is expanding its growth strategy from one lunar landing per year to multiple landings annually, utilizing proven landers, operational maturity, and expanded production capacity to meet demand.

Firefly is using flight data from its first successful lunar mission to enhance the "Blue Ghost" lander with optimized thermal systems and advanced operational procedures based on real mission experience. These improvements are being integrated into a set of "build-to-print" landers, enabling faster production cycles without major redesigns between missions. Ray Allensworth, Vice President of Spacecraft, added that the company has templated the "Blue Ghost" design, cutting lunar delivery time in half, and plans to continue improving this timeline as spacecraft production scales up, multiple missions are executed, and lessons learned are applied.

Following the company's first successful moon landing, Firefly's upcoming lunar missions include: delivering payloads to the lunar far side, Gruithuisen Domes, and the south pole using the "Blue Ghost" lander and Elytra orbiter, as well as a subcontract to deploy NASA's "Moonfall" drone above the lunar south pole using Elytra. Each vehicle will be built and assembled at the company's new large-scale spacecraft facility and cleanroom near Austin, Texas, to form a more robust production line for lunar landers and orbiters.