Relive Blue Ghost Moon Landing An update occurs and follows its ongoing tasks.
An undeveloped spacecraft developed in the United States has successfully softened on the moon, leaving only a second private-sector company in Texas Firefly Aerospace to accomplish this feat.
Firefly’s 6.6-foot-high (2-meter-high) blue ghost Lunar Lander landed near the moon around 2:34 a.m. Sunday (3:34 a.m. ET).
The private-sector-developed lunar landing parade was launched this year as part of a robotic spacecraft that NASA and its partner agencies hope to pave the way for astronauts.
Success is far from a guarantee. In February 2023, another Texas-based space company, Intuitive Machines, became the first private-sector company to lay a vehicle on the moon, but broadly speaking, about half of the moon’s landing attempts ended in failure.
Firefly CEO Jason Kim said after landing, the lander was “stable and upright”.
“Even if we landed, everything was clockwork,” King said. “We had some moonlight dust on our boots.”
Each of the four feet of Blue Ghost is equipped with sensors designed to instantly confirm that they touch the lunar soil. However, when the spacecraft landed, the webcast showed that three of the vehicle’s four login legs had confirmed contact.
Blue Ghost program director Ray Allensworth told CNN in an interview that there might be a benign explanation.
“So, it’s very likely that the software is ignoring the data from that sensor – throwing it away because it might have tripped early. I’m not 100% sure,” Allen Sworth said. “We have to go back and look at the data.”
But it was obvious that the blue ghost was upright, she said. More importantly, all signs so far indicate that the Blue Ghost has landed a fact in the expected 330-foot (100-meter) target, Allen Sworth said in a press conference.
Firefly Aerospace shared the first images of the blue ghost’s surface after a successful touchdown. – Firefly Aerospace
During the final descent, the lander also performed two “hazard avoidance” operations, including boulders and rocks, suggesting that Blue Ghost’s autonomous landing software can run as needed.
The mission landed near an ancient volcanic feature called Mons Latreille, which is located on the far side of the moon’s distal end of the equator. Mons Latreille is located in Mare Crisium in Latin or “Sea of Crisis” in Latin, a wide lunar basin, 340 miles (550 kilometers) wide.
The team chose the site because “it avoids large magnetic anomalies (or disruptions) on the moon’s surface, which could destroy some of our payload measurements,” Ryan Watkins, a program scientist at NASA’s Office of Exploration Science Strategy and Integration, said in a December briefing.
An “incredible achievement”
About 40 minutes after landing, the first image of Blue Ghost’s new house arrived on Earth, showing the lunar dust at its feet, a crater and part of a portion of the lander.
“The navigation system really did such a great job and found that we looked like a relatively flat surface,” said Brigette Oaks, vice president of Firefly Engineering.
The shadow of the blue ghost lander can be seen on the surface of the moon, and above it can be seen the earth. – Firefly Aerospace
King said he hopes to land inspire the next generation of children. “You never know where to land,” he said. “We just landed on the moon. We hope today’s fireflies have inspired a whole generation. Everyone in space has space.”
Janet Petro, NASA’s acting administrator, expressed his gratitude to the Firefly team and everyone who worked on the mission, emphasizing their motivation and dedication.
“This incredible achievement shows how NASA and American companies bring a leading way to space exploration for everyone,” Petro said. “We have learned a lot of lessons – the technology and science demonstrations on Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 will improve our ability to discover more science and can ensure that our spacecraft tools are safe for future human exploration in the short and long term.”
Lunar Daytime has just begun to start at the Blue Ghost landing site when Rand landed in the middle of the night.
“That was when we were rising sun at the landing site of Mare Crisium, we wanted to make the most of the entire Lunar Day (14 Earth Days), when we had sunlight that could run 10 payloads,” Risa Schnautz, Firefly’s director of marketing and communications, said in an email to CNN.
Blue Ghost will conduct scientific and technical demonstrations over the next 14 days, including collecting lunar samples, drilling into the ground, performing X-ray imaging and capturing high-definition images.
Blue Ghost’s scientific equipment kit
Blue Ghost is equipped with 10 scientific instruments and technology demonstrations from NASA, some of which have begun collecting data as Lunar Lander travels through approximately 239,000 miles (384,400 kilometers) of gaps between Earth and the Moon.
The device includes a device that is testing how to use GPS services on orbits and on the surface of the moon, a vacuum designed to absorb soil, and a telescope that will observe how Earth’s protective magnetic field, also known as the magnetosphere, responds to space weather.
Blue Ghost’s landing site planned by Mons Latreille (illustrated) inside Mare Crisium. -CNN/NASA
Firefly also expects the spacecraft to deliver amazing images from its landing site.
Allensworth said that Blue Ghost’s live broadcast in Mission Control was not broadcast live using its HD camera, but wanted to focus the vehicle’s communication bandwidth on providing accurate real-time data to obtain information about the altitude and speed of the spacecraft.
“Even if you may have the ability to stream live, it’s not always the most practical thing,” Allensworth said.
During the 14 days on the moon, Blue Ghost will photograph solar eclipse, during which the Earth will block the sun rays on the moon’s surface for about five hours. The vehicle is also expected to take photos of the phenomenon that astronauts last witnessed more than 50 years ago.
“There is a phenomenon called “the ray of the moon’s range” (scattered light caused by floating electrostatic particles) that only Apollo 15 and 17 astronauts can see with their eyes,” King told CNN in a last interview. “We will be able to capture it in 4K by 4K HD video and share it with the rest of the world.”
Firefly’s Blue Ghost will also continue to collect data to Lunar Night for a few hours – when cruel cold conditions push the landing zone near Mons Latreille into the shadows, the temperature may be as cold as minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit (Minus 173 degrees Celsius).
The fall of Lunar Night is usually spelled for the end of Lunar Landers. But NASA wants Blue Ghost to keep going. King said the space agency has even increased the value of the contract paid to Fireflies (from $93 million to $101 million), in part because the company can prepare the lander to survive this cold temperature.
Paving the way for humans to go on the moon
Blue Ghost Lander is part of NASA’s commercial lunar payload service or CLPS initiative.
The program is a concerted effort by the Space Agency to encourage the private sector to develop lunar landers, hoping that their robotic exploration will pave the way for astronauts to return to the moon for the first time in 50 years under the Artemis program.
Dr. Joel Kearns, associate manager of NASA’s scientific mission bureau exploration, said Firefly makes something seem very difficult.
“It’s a very challenging technical feat to land on the moon’s surface, and what you’re seeing today is evidence of the model that NASA has been pursuing since 2018,” he said, referring to the CLPS program.
Firefly staff celebrated at a watch party in Cedar Park, Texas, Blue Ghost successfully visited on March 2.
There are currently 14 companies that are able to bid for CLPS contracts that provide funding for the moon’s landing. So far, the two companies (astronomical technology and intuitive machines) have tried the mission, but only the latter has made a gentle touchdown.
Due to advancement issues, the first mission of the celestial animals failed last year. Although the intuition machine’s mission has been largely successful, its lander tilted around it, limiting the time it can run.
Currently, two other private sector vehicles are moving towards the moon. The second lander of the intuitive machine was launched on Wednesday and headed to the Antarctic region of the moon. A lander built by Japanese company Ispace, launched in January with Blue Ghost, will make a soft landing this spring in order to redeem the company’s failed attempt in 2023.
King told CNN that he is looking forward to Firefly’s next NASA’s lunar mission, which is already on the books and plans to land a blue ghost vehicle far away from the moon. So far, only China has sent spacecraft there.
The CEO said Firefly had exciting new technology on the deck for the feat.
The mission’s separate spacecraft (called Elytra) will be placed into orbit around the moon to act as a communication relay to perform beam data between the spacecraft and the earth, as the blue ghost’s antenna will not be able to point directly to the home.
“That orbiter is very exciting because we can put cameras there, we can put other sensors there, and now we can start creating a new mapped moon,” King said. “So we’re very excited about that because there are a lot of governments, science and business entities who want that data.”
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