CEDAR PARK, Texas—Early Sunday morning, whereas most of America is sleeping, a pair dozen engineers in Central Texas may have their eyes glued to screens watching knowledge stream in from a quarter-million miles away.

These floor controllers at Firefly Aerospace hope that their robotic spacecraft, named Blue Ghost, will develop into the second business mission to finish a delicate touchdown on the Moon, following the landing of a spacecraft by Intuitive Machines final yr. That is the primary lunar mission for Firefly Aerospace, an organization established in 2014 to develop a small satellite tv for pc launcher.

Since then, Firefly has undergone modifications in possession, a chapter, and a renaming. Recognizing that the corporate needed to diversify to outlive, Firefly executives started pursuing different enterprise alternatives—spacecraft manufacturing, lunar missions, and a medium-class rocket—to go alongside its small Alpha launch automobile.

From a enterprise perspective, Firefly’s foray into lunar transportation has been definitely worth the effort. NASA’s Industrial Lunar Payload Providers (CLPS) program has awarded the corporate three contracts to ship experiments to the Moon’s floor. Beneath the primary deal, NASA is paying Firefly about $101 million to move 10 payloads to the Moon on the corporate’s first Blue Ghost lander.

Now, Firefly is about to search out out if its lunar program is a technical success. Touchdown on the Moon is dangerous. Within the final decade, the success fee for lunar touchdown makes an attempt is slightly above 50 %—6-for-11—and two of the profitable landers both tipped over or landed upside-down.

Jason Kim, Firefly’s CEO, is assured that Blue Ghost will work. In an interview with Ars, Kim cited the lander’s growth crew, design, and “sturdy” testing on the bottom earlier than Blue Ghost went to the launch pad as causes for his optimism.

“On the finish of the day, it is these three issues,” Kim mentioned. “It is the folks. Are you skilled up? Are they dedicated? Are they accountable and personal it? Two, it is the design with margin, actually good designs with margin, then bearing in mind all the teachings realized (from different lunar missions).