WASHINGTON — NASA says its program to use commercial spacecraft to deliver payloads to the lunar surface is working well despite just a single fully successful landing in four attempts.
At a NASA town hall meeting during this week’s Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference, agency officials hailed the success of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lander, which touched down on the moon early March 2. The lander carried 10 NASA payloads for the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
Brad Bailey, assistant deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said that as of the March 10 town hall, six of the payloads had achieved their “mission success criteria,” with three of them also achieving stretch goals.
The lander’s operations were dialed back, as expected, during the heat of the lunar midday, he noted, but would ramp up again as it heads towards lunar sunset and the end of the mission March 16.
“As they start heading towards lunar night, then we expect to complete all the operations of the other payloads,” he said. “So overall, it’s been a fabulous, wonderful proof positive that the CLPS model does work.”
That proof is critical to the program given problems by other landers carrying NASA payloads for CLPS. In January 2024, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander suffered a propulsion anomaly hours after launch, preventing it from landing on the moon. Its payloads were able to collect some data in cislunar space before the lander reentered.
A month later, the IM-1 lander mission by Intuitive Machines touched down on the moon but fell on its side. The lander operated for a week, allowing NASA to collect some data from its payloads as well as additional studies not originally planned, like characterizing “multipath” communications caused by radio signals bouncing off the lunar surface.
On March 6, the IM-2 mission reached the moon but again ended up on its side, this time in a shadowed crater in the south polar regions of the moon. The company declared the mission over after barely 12 hours on the surface, citing the difficulty in generating power to operate the Athena lander and stay warm in those conditions.
“I will say that we were able to exercise the NASA payloads that we funded,” Bailey said of the IM-2 mission. “We also got some really great images from Athena.” The principal NASA payload on IM-2 was PRIME-1, a drill that was able to test its operations but not able to drill into the lunar surface to look for volatiles like water ice, as intended.
Despite the setbacks, NASA is pressing ahead with additional CLPS missions. The next could fly as soon as August when Blue Origin is scheduled to launch its first Blue Moon Mark 1 robotic lander. It will carry a single NASA payload called Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume Surface Studies (SCALPSS), versions of which have flown on other CLPS missions, including Blue Ghost 1, to see how the plumes from rocket engines affect the lunar surface during landing.
Another NASA CLPS mission is scheduled for as soon as September when Astrobotic launches its Griffin lander. That was originally intended to carry NASA’s VIPER lunar rover, but NASA elected last summer to cancel VIPER, citing cost overruns and delays. Astrobotic will instead deliver a commercial rover developed by Venturi Astrolab on that mission, using the same CLPS task order.
NASA is now examining options for commercial partnerships to fly VIPER. The agency issued a call for proposals Feb. 3 for such partnerships. Companies would have to demonstrate to NASA how they would get VIPER to the moon and operate it there, fulfilling the science goals for the mission.
An initial “Step 1” proposal was due to NASA March 3, and Bailey said the agency received several responses. “We’re actually quite pleased with the turnouts from Step 1,” he said. NASA is currently reviewing the proposals and will determine which meet the threshold for more detailed Step 2 proposals.
NASA’s recent challenges with lunar missions extend beyond landers and rovers. The Lunar Trailblazer orbiter was launched as a secondary payload on the Falcon 9 carrying the IM-2 lander on a mission to map water ice on the moon. However, the spacecraft suffered power and communications problems shortly after launch that kept it from performing the maneuvers needed to achieve a trajectory needed to arrive in lunar orbit in July.
Bailey said at the town hall meeting that the spacecraft appeared to be a slow tumble. “We believe that the solar panels aren’t receiving enough power for to turn on allow us to communicate with it,” he said.
Teams were working “around the clock” to try to restore contact with Lunar Trailblazer. “If Trailblazer gets into a favorable condition where the solar panels are collecting enough power, we can grab back ahold of it, and we’ll make assessments on what to do with Trailblazer at that time,” he said.
In a March 12 update, NASA said that those efforts remained unsuccessful. “While Lunar Trailblazer’s prime science mission is no longer possible, NASA is assessing whether there are mission options for the future,” the agency stated.
