LEANDER, Texas — A Central Texas company is heading to the moon.
Firefly Aerospace will send its lunar lander, Blue Ghost, in a SpaceX rocket. The space transportation company builds rockets and landers and is now working with NASA to send Blue Ghost to the moon and collect data.
"It gets your blood pumping there is no question about it,” Firefly Aerospace CEO Bill Weber said.
Blue Ghost is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Weber said the ultimate goal is for larger crafts and human missions.
“If you can land with a robotic system like Blue Ghost, and can conduct science and communicate regularly ... You can take the next step and feel comfortable. Ultimately putting people on the moon and really enabling mankind," Weber said.
Before that can happen, Weber said there will be a lot of testing and data collection for 14 days.
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"There will be a high bandwidth data link back. We will get a lot of imagery ... Picking up the lunar regolith, the dust, and pulling it into a vacuum and analyzing those sorts of things, making sure you know 100%," Weber said. "Through digital analysis, we will know physically what we are dealing with up on the moon."
Firefly is also working on a long-term project to build a rocket that will head to the moon. The company has been doing engine testing in Briggs, Texas, which is about 30 miles north of Leander. Firefly hopes to send one up by 2026.
In the meantime, Weber said he's excited about what the future holds with its rockets and when Blue Ghost touches down in the winter. Firefly hopes to launch Blue Ghost in late November or early December.