(Reuters) -Firefly Aerospace said on Tuesday it has secured a $176.7 million NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services contract to deliver five NASA payloads to the Moon’s South Pole in 2029, marking another step toward expanding private sector participation in U.S. lunar exploration.
The mission, dubbed Blue Ghost Mission 4, will use Firefly’s Elytra Dark orbital vehicle and Blue Ghost lunar lander to deploy two rovers and three scientific instruments aimed at evaluating lunar resources, radiation and thermal conditions critical for future human exploration.
In a pivotal shift for U.S. space policy, NASA has been increasingly turning to private companies such as Firefly to deliver critical payloads and technologies to the Moon, a strategy designed to accelerate deep space exploration by leveraging commercial efficiency and cost savings.
The Elytra Dark vehicle will first deploy the Blue Ghost lander into lunar orbit and then remain in orbit for over five years.
The lander will operate on the Moon’s surface for more than 12 days, providing power, data and communications for the payloads, which include the MoonRanger rover, a Canadian Space Agency rover, and other instruments.
Firefly Aerospace’s first Blue Ghost mission successfully landed on the Moon in March. The mission, named “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” launched in January, and became the second private firm to score a Moon landing, though it declared itself the first company to make a “fully successful” soft landing.
The Texas-based company is also preparing for a U.S. IPO, aiming to capitalize on growing investor interest in commercial space ventures, according to Reuters reporting.
(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)
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