ESA’s ambitious Moonlight vision of a network of communications and data relay satellites around the Moon will use Firefly Aerospace to bring SSTL’s Lunar Pathfinder to the Moon under NASA's commercial lunar payload contract.
Firefly's mission will see Lunar Pathfinder delivered to lunar orbit via their Blue Ghost vehicle while the Blue Ghost lander will continue to the Moon's far side and deploy a communications user terminal and radio telescope experiment to the lunar surface.
The user terminal will be used to commission Lunar Pathfinder and institute a new standard for S-band radio in space. Lunar Pathfinder will be put in operation immediately as a third experiment flying to the Moon on Firefly – the first operational radio telescope – will use the lunar communications satellite to send data to Earth from the surface of the Moon.
ESA is supporting the development of Lunar Pathfinder through a commercial Lunar mission support services partnership with SSTL. ESA is the anchor customer for Lunar Pathfinder services and the Agency recently expanded the partnership contract with SSTL for additional communications services.
As well as offering communication services to orbiters and assets on the lunar surface, Lunar Pathfinder will also host navigation and science experiments: