The lunar payload was delivered to Firefly Aerospace, which will provide the launch and lander for the mission as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.
The company’s materials testing platform, Regolith Adherence Characterization - 1st Flight, will be used to determine how lunar soil, which is known as regolith, interacts with modern materials when exposed to deep space and the moon’s environment during different phases of the Blue Ghost lunar mission, which is scheduled to launch in May 2024.
“We need to understand how modern materials interact with lunar regolith in order to develop robust and reliable lunar surface systems,” said Mark Gittleman, Aegis Aerospace chief strategy officer, in the release. “RAC-1 is carrying candidate surface system material samples from NASA, academia, and industry.”
The material samples will be exposed to space during transit to the moon, then to a variety of natural and induced environments upon lunar landing. Photographs and environmental data of each sample will be logged during the mission for future analysis.
