NASA awards Firefly Aerospace $177M to drop more bots on the Moon

NASA has awarded Firefly Aerospace $176.7 million to deliver a pair of rovers and a trio of scientific instruments to the Moon as part of the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander is capable of delivering 240 kg to the lunar surface and will carry an autonomous NASA micro-rover, equipped with a neutron spectrometer to study the composition of the lunar regolit and able to collect images and telemetry.

It will carry a rover from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) too, also equipped with a spectrometer, cameras, and a radiation micro-dosimeter. The CSA rover is designed to explore permanently shadowed regions and survive at least one lunar night.

The plan is to land at the Moon's South Pole region in 2029.

Firefly Aerospace is notable for being the first private company to successfully land a spacecraft on the lunar surface ...