Dystopic Back to the Moon – Two Commercial Lunar Science Experiments Landed on the Moon this Week
Published 4 months ago • 8 min read
March 8, 2025
Dystopic Newsletter
Back to the Moon – Two Commercial Lunar Science Experiments Landed on the Moon this Week
Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander casts a shadow on the moon's surface
Update on my book: How the Hell Did We Get Here?
Week two of my Beta book reviewers providing feedback. I'm reviewing possible book cover changes with the manuscript graphic arts team. We will head to copy editing by April 11th.
You can find out more about my book and book release updates at my Website HERE.
Now, back to our currently scheduled Dystopic ...
Two stories dominate this week’s news. First, the Trump administration kicked the “tariff wars in high by levying major tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico. Second, Thet U.S. halting weapons shipments and intelligence sharing with Ukraine to intensify pressure on president Zelensky to accept a miner rights deal and come to the table for peace negotiations with Russia. What you likely missed was the big news in science and technology this week:
Two commercial Space missions have successfully landed on the Moon.
On Sunday, March 2nd, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 lander touched down in the Moon’s Mare Crisium basin. This marks the second lunar landing by a private company on the moon. On March 6th, five days later, Intuitive Machines' IM-2 lunar lander, code-named Athena, landed on Mons Mouton on the south pole of the moon, making it the 3rd commercial mission and Intuitive Machines’ second mission to land on the moon.
The IM-2 Athena landing was not without issue as telemetry indicates that for a second time, the IM lander has “ for the second time, that touchdown has left the lander functioning, but at an 'off-nominal' angle. In short, IM-2 appears to have tipped over during landing, a repeat of the tilt issues during Intuitive Machine’s previous IM-1 missions.
As Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus noted at a NASA press conference at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas:
“Any time that you ship a spacecraft to Florida for flight and end up a week later operating on the moon, I declare that a success. Now, we think that we have been very successful up to this point. However, I do have to tell you that we don't believe we are in the correct attitude on the surface of the moon yet again."
These missions represent the first steps in the NASA Artemis program. Artemis is NASA’s ambitious plan to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon.
NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CPLS) Mission Plan
NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CPLS) is a 10-Mission program to test and evaluate new technologies and techniques for prospecting for critical mineral resources, including water. With 1/9 of the Earth's gravity, using lunar resources and building interplanetary transport in lunar orbit, the so-called CIS Lunar economy can substantially reduce the costs of humankind’s expansion across the solar system. NASA’s CLPS is part of the Artemis program to establish a permanent human base on the moon by 2030.
According to NASA:
NASA is working with several American companies to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
These companies, ranging in size, bid on delivering payloads for NASA. This includes everything from payload integration and operations to launching from Earth and landing on the surface of the Moon. Under Artemis, commercial deliveries beginning in 2023 will perform science experiments, test technologies, and demonstrate capabilities to help NASA explore the Moon as it prepares for human missions. CLPS contracts are indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts with a cumulative maximum contract value of $2.6 billion through 2028.
NASA has selected five commercial companies to participate in the CPLS program. Each mission will land at a different location on the moon, and there is a degree of redundancy of technology test packages between the various missions and companies in case one or more missions fails. The following companies have been selected for the CPLS program:
Astrobotic – 2 missions
Intuitive Machines – 4 missions
Firefly – 3 Missions
Team Draper – 1 mission
Blue Origin – 1 mission (Note: First test of 3 metric ton cargo lander)
You can find out more about NASA CPLS and its various missionsHERE
The Artimis Program
NASA and other world space agencies have the vision to create a Cislunar ecosystem as the first step in humankind's permanent expansion to Mars and then across the Solar System. "Cis-lunar space" is the region of space from the Earth to the Moon, including two Earth-Sun gravitational equilibrium points, L1 and L2. Artimis is the first step in creating humankind’s permanent presence on the moon and then using the moon’s resources to go to Mars.
As an overview to Artemis, I’ll use an excerpt from Chapter 9: The New Space Race: Space as a New Theater of War from my upcoming book, How the Hell Did We Get Here? …
Artemis, headed by the U.S. State Department and NASA, is a combination of a legal framework for space exploration and development and a science and technology program to execute exploration and development.
As a legal framework, the Artemis Accords are a non-binding set of principles designed to guide civil space exploration and use in the 21st century and an extension of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Launched in 2020, as of June 2024, the accords have 43 signatories, including the EU, India, Japan, and UAE, and continue to add nations willing to join. The Artemis Accords are based on ten principles that apply to exploration and development (Artemis Accords 2025):
Space will be used for peaceful purposes
mission and transparency of mission and action
Interoperability of equipment to create a wider ecosystem
provide emergency assistance when requested
sharing and releasing scientific data
protecting heritage by preserving historic landing sites,
sustainable utilization of space resources
provide notification and location of activities and avoid harmful conflict
Ecological development with disposal of orbital debris and spacecraft.
The Artemis Program is a NASA-led international government-industry multiple-phase program to create a permanent base on the Moon by 2030. The program is organized in stages, including (Artemis 2025):
Return to the Moon: Mission for first humans to explore the region near the lunar South Pole, which is believed to have significant water resources
Lunar Gateway: Using a new heavy launch vehicle (SpaceX Starship), assemble the world's first d space station orbiting the Moon. The SpaceX Starship program has a human landing system that will be used to conduct further lunar missions.
Permanent Moon Base: Assemble and operate a permanent lunar moon base. Base construction and operations use the Lunar Gateway as a weigh station between the Moon and lunar orbit.
You can find out more about the Artemis program (Artemis 2025) HERE.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 Lander - The First Successful Landing in NASA's CPLS program
Artist rendering of Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission-1 Lander
As previously noted, on Sunday, March 2nd, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 lander touched down in the Moon’s Mare Crisium basin.
Blue Ghost Mission-1 hosts 10 technology demonstration payloads to research conditions on the Moon and test capabilities that will be critical for future crewed Artemis Lunar missions. A majority of Blue Ghost’s experiments are designed to study lunar dust and regolith. The mission’s tests include:
Lunar PlanetVac experiment to take samples of the lunar regolith using a form of vacuum technology designed by Honeybee Robotics
The Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC) experiment to study how lunar dust sticks to a variety of materials, from solar panels to different spacecraft coatings design by Aegis Aerospace - lunar dust is a serious problem
The Electrodynamic Dust Shield experiment, designed by NASA, to test if electric fields can remove dust from surfaces like solar panels
The Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) experiment to take images to study how lunar dust spreads during a powered lunar landing.
A radiation-hardened computer designed by the University of Montana to understand electronics shielding techniques given the moon is not protected by the earth’s magnetic fields and faces significant solar interstellar radiation.
A test of GPS/GNSS on the moon by NASA and the Italian Space Agency. The experiment attempts to answer the question: Can current GPS systems project enough signal to use these same signals for Lunar location services?
The test of GPS/GNSS on the moon is already a smashing success! NASA reports that Blue Ghost has become the first technology demonstration to acquire and track Earth-based navigation signals on the Moon’s surface. You can read more about this experiment HERE.
Firefly has 3 Lunar Ghost missions planned. You can find out more about Firefly’s Blue Ghost mission HERE
Intuitive Machines IM-2 Mission’s a successful, yet less than perfect, landing
Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission became the first private company to successfully land on the Moon. While IM-1 survived its landing, the lander ended up tipping over on its side due to a laser altimeter failure during the landing sequence. Despite the mishap, IM-1 was able to complete a majority of its planned tests. You can learn more about the IM-1 mission HERE
Intuitive Machines IM-2 Athena Lander Assembly Prior to Launch
You can imagine how nerve-racking Intuitive Machines' mission control team in Houston, TX, must have been as the IM-2 descended to the lunar surface on March 6th. Unfortunately, history repeated itself as sensors indicated that the IM-2 mission suffered from the same tilt-on-landing issue the previous IM-1 mission encountered. Early Telemetry
indicated the IM-2 was still functioning. Unfortunately, having tipped on its side, the lander, code-named “Athena,” could not generate enough energy to charge its batteries with solar power cells blocked or in the wrong position.
The Intuitive Machines team carried out a limited number of experiments before Athena ran out of power and ceased operations on Friday, March 7th. Unfortunately, Athen could not deploy it’s primary exploration missions:
PRIME-1, Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1, comprised of the TRIDENT drill to extract lunar soil (regolith) up to 1 meter below the surface, and MSOLO, a mass spectrometer designed to analyze the composition of that sample for water and other components.
Nova Micro Hopper, code-named Grace, is a rocket-powered drone with a range of hops up to 25 Km. Grace’s mission was to map a wide swath of the landing area for future landings. It was also the first test of 4G cellular networking for lunar operation. Nokia funded the 4G equipment package.
Three YAOKI, the micro-rovers design by Japanese firm Dymon Co. Ltd., a venture company specializing in robotics and space technology. YAOKI to provide detailed close-up images of the lunar surface and transmit the data back to Earth using Intuitive Machines’ data Nokia 4G cellular transmission services.
Self-Photo of IM-2 Athena Lander tilted over on the face of the moon
We learn the most from our failures. Millions of bytes of data were recorded to help improve future missions in the CPLS program. What is clear, given the rough terrain, is that landing on the south pole will continue to be a challenge.
NASA has contracted Intuitive Machines with four missions to prototype various lunar infrastructure technology demonstrations in preparation for a permanent manned presence on the moon. The IM-2 was supposed to demonstrate lunar mobility, resource prospecting, and analysis of volatile substances from subsurface lunar materials. The mission is considered a critical step toward uncovering water sources beyond Earth. Water harvested from the moon is a key component for establishing sustainable infrastructure both on the lunar surface and on Mars or other deep space missions. Other CPLS missions will now have to fill the gaps left by IM-2’s less-than-perfect execution. You can find out more details about the IM-2 mission HERE
That’s a Wrap for this week's Dystopic!
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