NASA Payload LISTER Drills Down to Take the Moon’s Temperature

A technology demonstration instrument aboard Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 is the deepest-reaching robotic planetary subsurface thermal probe. The Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity, or LISTER, is one of 10 NASA payloads aboard Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 lander as part of the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative. In this video, LISTER can be seen activating its specialized drill to measure the flow of heat from the Moon’s interior. So far, the gas-powered drill has probed about 3 feet (1 meter) into the surface. LISTER’s pneumatic drill is designed to go as deep as three meters (9 feet). Every half meter, the drilling system will pause so that a thermal probe can gauge the temperature of the Moon. LISTER, along with the 10 other NASA science and technology instruments aboard the lander will operate on the Moon, near a volcanic featured called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium, for 14 Earth days, or roughly one lunar day. Texas Tech University in Lubbock and Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company of Altadena, California, jointly developed LISTER. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the development for seven of the 10 CLPS payloads aboard Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, including LISTER. Video courtesy Firefly Aerospace.