Historic lunar landing by Austin-area based Firefly Aerospace is this weekend
Cedar Park, TX (KXAN) — In the early morning hours of Sunday, March 2, a lunar lander built just north of Austin, Texas will touchdown on the lunar surface. It will be the first lunar lander built in the area to land on the moon and one of only a few private companies to do so.
Firefly Aerospace built Blue Ghost One as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. The mission will carry several experiments to the moon, each of which will assist future manned missions and are expected to help pave the way for people living on the moon.
Blue Ghost One launched from Cape Canaveral, FL on January 15th. The week's long journey allowed several experiments to be conducted, while ensuring the lander reached the moon on March 2.
'We've been in low lunar orbit for a few days now. As we get closer to that March 2 landing date, we're at a very low, almost circular orbit around the moon,' said Ray Allensworth, Spacecraft Program Director with Firefly Aerospace.
Central Texas aerospace company expands to prepare for new space age
Once ready, the lander will flip over and begin its descent to the surface. The trip will take about 12 minutes.
Video and photos taken of the lunar surface by the spacecraft will assist in this descent.
'Google Earth, you have the wonderful privilege of getting to zoom down into the tiniest details and see cars and license plates and people walking around the streets. We don't have that level of detailed information about the moon,' said Kevin Scholtes, Future Systems Architect with Firefly Aerospace.
'As the lander is coming in, we're getting much, much higher resolution information, and that's greatly improving our ability to land, helping us identify hazards, helping us figure out where the softest, safest spot is to touch down,' Scholtes said.
These new photos and video will greatly improve the chances for success of the autonomous landing of Blue Ghost One.
Allensworth expects the control room to get tense in the moments leading up to landing. 'It gets really, really quiet in the Mission Operations Center. Everyone's looking at data very, very focused. You could just hear a pin drop.'
Once the lander reaches the ground, the crew will take readings to ensure the health of the lander. If things look good, 'then I think we'll all just kind of erupt into joy, high fives, hugs, all of that,' Allensworth said.
Then the experiments begin. Several NASA projects are on board Blue Ghost One. This includes systems that will check GPS capabilities, a device for measuring the distance from the Earth to the Moon, an x-ray telescope and a drill.
Cedar Park-based aerospace company awarded $21M contract
'Getting to poke holes in the lunar surface and see what the interior is hard to pass up,' said Scholtes.
After two weeks, night will descend on the moon. Temperature will plummet and Blue Ghost One will freeze.
'It will be there forever. It's this monument now that will live on the lunar surface. I think it means a lot to us, kind of, it's like a piece of your soul,' Allensworth said.
Two more Blue Ghost missions are planned for the next few years.
KXAN will be hand for the landing this weekend. Stay tuned for updates.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
26 minutes ago
- CNN
New tech reveals never-before-seen details in solar corona
A breakthrough in adaptive optics technology captured the clearest images to date of the sun's corona. The incredible resolution of the new images could provide new insights on some of the mysteries surrounding our star.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
NASA orbiter saw something astonishing peek through Martian clouds
NASA's longest-running Mars mission has sent back an unprecedented side view of a massive volcano rising above the Red Planet, just before dawn. On May 2, as sunlight crept over the Martian horizon, the Odyssey spacecraft captured Arsia Mons, a towering, long-extinct volcano, puncturing a glowing band of greenish haze in the planet's upper atmosphere. The 12-mile-high volcano — nearly twice the height of Mauna Loa in Hawaii — punctures a veil of fog, emerging like a monument to the planet's ancient past. The space snapshot is both visually arresting and scientifically enlightening. "We picked Arsia Mons hoping we would see the summit poke above the early morning clouds," said Jonathon Hill, who leads Odyssey's camera operations at Arizona State University, in a statement, "and it didn't disappoint." SEE ALSO: An enormous Martian cloud returns every spring. Scientists found out why. Arsia Mons sits at the southern end of a towering trio of volcanoes called the Tharsis Montes. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech To get this view, Odyssey had to do something it wasn't originally built for. The orbiter, which has been flying around Mars since 2001, usually points its camera straight down to map the planet's surface. But over the past two years, scientists have begun rotating the spacecraft 90 degrees to look toward the horizon. That adjustment allows NASA to study how dust and ice clouds change over the seasons. Though the image is still an aerial view, the vantage point is of the horizon, similar to how astronauts can see Earth's horizon 250 miles above the planet on the International Space Station. From that altitude, Earth doesn't fill their entire view — there's enough distance and perspective for them to see the planet's curved edge meeting the blackness of space. Odyssey flies above Mars at about the same altitude. Arsia Mons sits at the southern end of a towering trio of volcanoes called the Tharsis Montes. The Tharsis region is home to the largest volcanoes in the solar system. The lack of plate tectonics on the Red Planet allowed them to grow many times larger than those anywhere on Earth. Together, they dominate the Martian landscape and are sometimes covered in clouds, especially in the early hours. But not just any clouds — these are made of water ice, a different breed than the planet's more common carbon dioxide clouds. Arsia Mons is the cloudiest of the three. Scientists have recently studied a particular, localized cloud formation that occurs over the mountain, dubbed the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud. The transient feature, streaking 1,100 miles over southern Mars, lasts only about three hours in the morning during spring before vanishing in the warm sunlight. It's formed by strong winds being forced up the mountainside. The cloudy canopy on display in Odyssey's new image, according to NASA, is called the aphelion cloud belt. This widespread seasonal system drapes across the planet's equator when Mars is farthest from the sun. This is Odyssey's fourth side image since 2023, and it is the first to show a volcano breaking through the clouds. "We're seeing some really significant seasonal differences in these horizon images," said Michael D. Smith, a NASA planetary scientist, in a statement. "It's giving us new clues to how Mars' atmosphere evolves over time."
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
June's Strawberry Moon ushers in best time of year to view the Moon
Known as the Strawberry Moon, the last full Moon of spring rises early Wednesday, beginning the best time of year to enjoy our celestial neighbor. Dr. Tyler Richey-Yowell, a postdoctoral fellow at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, said this is the first Moon to appear this low on the horizon in about a year. June's full Moon is the last of astronomical spring, even though if you ask a meteorologist, summer is already in full swing. "The Moon going across the night sky is always going to be a little lower because, in the summertime into the summer, the Sun goes higher and higher in the sky just because of our orbit. And so the Moon, being completely opposite of that, gets lower and lower," she said. Moon Shot: 7 Tips On How To Photograph The Moon The Strawberry Moon gets its name from the time when the berry is ready for picking, but it also corresponds with the slight hue as the Moon is lower in the sky. "When it spends more of that time in that lower portion of the sky, you're looking through more of Earth's atmosphere, which makes these moons generally look redder and more golden. And also, they appear bigger," Richey-Yowell said. "The atmosphere actually bends some of the light. And so while there's not really any astronomical significance to moons in the summer, we do actually get cooler, bigger, prettier moons in the summer." For some in the northern tier and Southeast, the Strawberry Moon may be especially colorful this year. Saharan dust arriving to Florida and crawling up the Southeast coast can also scatter light in a way that creates vibrant sunrises and sunsets, as well as a tint to the Moon. In the North, wildfire smoke from Canada has reduced air quality but also had the same effect on the sky color. Richey-Yowell said the best time to enjoy the Moon throughout the summer is right after sunset, when the Moon is peeking up over the horizon. During this time, the Moon can appear to have a reddish tint. For the Strawberry Moon on Wednesday, it will be at its biggest and brightest after midnight (Pacific time) and after 3 a.m. (Eastern time). How To Photograph The Moon With Your Phone "If you're a night person, that would be the time to go up and see it," she said. With an earlier time of day to see the Moon in late spring and this summer, it's a good chance to practice photographing our only satellite. If you plan to use a smartphone or camera, Richey-Yowell recommends finding something to stabilize your device. "Turning down the saturation on your phone is typically what I do. The Moon's actually just really good for holding up to a telescope as well," she said. "They also make some really nice like phone holders that you can attach to your own personal telescope." The Strawberry Moon will make good practice for next month. The full Buck Moon appears at its fullest just after 4 p.m. ET on July 11, which will make for a spectacular sunset and article source: June's Strawberry Moon ushers in best time of year to view the Moon
