Watch: Firefly Aerospace's historic landing of Blue Ghost on the moon
Firefly Aerospace released video Tuesday showing the historic touchdown of its Blue Ghost lunar lander.
The Cedar Park, Texas-based commercial company was making its first trip to the moon with help from NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
While fellow Texas company Intuitive Machines managed a soft landing in 2024 under the program, that company's lander named Odysseus tipped to one side, and NASA was not able to glean as much from its on-board experiments as it could have had the lander stayed upright.
Blue Ghost did just that, nailing the landing early Sunday to begin a 14-day mission with 10 NASA payloads on board that will remain active during the lunar day.
The released video shows the spacecraft as it maneuvered away from surface hazards that were identified during its descent from lunar orbit.
The company stated the lander touched down within the planned target radius located in Mare Crisium, which is in the northeast quadrant of the face of the moon as seen from the northern hemisphere.
The video excited UCF professor Phil Metzger, who is most interested in how lunar dust interacts as the spacecraft landed.
'This is superb! Will be a treasure for quantifying plume-surface interactions during lunar landing.' he posted on X. 'There are some things I don't understand yet and will take a while to unpack.'
Among the NASA payloads are some that look to get more information on lunar dust, including the Electrodynamic Dust Shield developed by a team at Kennedy Space Center. Another called Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies looks to see what sort of dust plume is kicked up by landers. And a third is called the Lunar PlanetVac that will sample lunar regolith.
'Blue Ghost has been busy since parking on the Moon!' the company posted on X on Tuesday afternoon. 'Just in the last two days, the data we've downlinked jumped from 27 GB to 57 GB as we continue NASA payload operations.'
One other payload already has a win for NASA and its partnership with the Italian Space Agency. That happened Monday when the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment successfully captured Earth-based navigation signals from U.S. GPS and Europe's Galileo systems, both versions of the Global Navigation Satellite System.
Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator for NASA's Space Communications and Navigation Program said the signals bodes well for the Artemis program's moon and Mars aspirations.
'This is a very exciting discovery for lunar navigation,' he said. 'We hope to leverage this capability for future missions.'
The Firefly mission marks the most active to date under NASA's CLPS program. The first mission by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology in January 2024 suffered a propulsion issue after launch and never made it to the moon. Intuitive Machines flew the second mission launching in February 2024, but several of the payloads were not able to operate after its tilted touchdown.
Firefly launched in January this year taking its time to get to the moon and then make the final approach.
A fourth mission, and second from Intuitive Machines, which launched from Kennedy Space Center last week, is taking a more direct path. It's slated to attempt a landing as soon as 12:32 p.m. Thursday, and one targeting the moon's south pole for the first time.
The same Nova-C lander design as used on the first mission — this one named Athena — is headed for Mons Mouton, bringing with it a NASA drill that will hunt for ice and other volatile substances while also hoping to deploy a small rover and a hopper that will propel itself into a crater.
Other CLPS missions that could fly this year include a third Intuitive Machines flight, a second from Astrobotic and the first from Blue Origin.
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