Elon Musk has launched hundreds of rockets, and even sent his Tesla Roadster into orbit, but Jeff Bezos’s rival billionaire will soon be able boast that he built a moon-rover. Firefly Aerospace (the private space company which recently landed the Blue Ghost craft on Moon ) – more about that later – announced on Tuesday that it had selected Bezos’s outfit Honeybee Robotics for NASA to build a moon rover.
This vehicle is scheduled to launch in 2028 to explore the Gruithuisen Dome on the Moon’s Near Side, a place humans have never been to in person or by robot. NASA describes the Domes as “a puzzle” because observations by spacecraft and humans using telescopes led to the development of a theory that they were “formed from a magma with a silica-rich composition, similar to granite.” Volcanoes can create beautiful subterranean tubes, which could be useful for Lunar colonies as they would be shielded against radiation.
Investigating the lunar volcanos would be a good thing to do both for pure scientific reasons and because it might help future lunar exploration.
NASA selected Firefly Aerospace in December 2024 to transport six experiments to the Domes. Firefly had promised to use its own Blue Ghost lunar lander, Elytra Dark space vehicle, and a “rover from an industrial provider” for the mission. Firefly revealed on Tuesday
that Honeybee Robotics was the industry provider. Honeybee is part of Blue Origin, Bezos’s space company.
Firefly has posted the image below to show what they think the machine will look.
Click to enlarge Honeybee’s Rover and Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Lander
According to the rover’s plan, it will travel along the southern edge the Gruithuisen Gamma Dome before passing through a boulderfield to reach the rim a recent impact. The rover will roll back to the lander before the end a lunar night “to allow repeat observations of boulders at different solar illumination angles.” It’s now back to zero
Honeybee, Firefly and Firefly had already worked together to develop the Lunar PlanetVac subsurface drill and the LISTER subsurface drilling system that made it to Earth earlier this month. This mission ended successfully around five hours after the lunar night on March 16. The company stated that “Firefly achieved 100% of our mission goals for Blue Ghost Mission 1”.
Firefly’s next missionfor NASA is scheduled for 2026 when another Blue Ghost will be bound for the darkside of the Moon. Fleet Space Technologies and the European Space Agency will also be sending payload to that mission. Firefly will make its third lunar trip on the trip to Gruithuisen Dome. (r)
