The ‘Blue Ghost’ mission of Firefly settles on the Moon’s surface safely
'Ghost Riders in the Sky,' Blue Ghost Mission 1 comes a little more than a year after the first commercial lunar landing.
Firefly Aerospace, a private space company, declared on Sunday that its Blue Ghost Mission 1 had successfully landed on the Moon. The accomplishment strengthens NASA’s collaboration with the private sector to promote lunar exploration and is the first successful commercial Moon landing in history.
“#BlueGhost has confirmed that it stuck the landing! Firefly has made history by becoming the first commercial enterprise to successfully land on the moon. A huge advance in commercial exploration is represented by this little stride on the moon. The business posted on X, “Congratulations to the entire Firefly team, our mission partners, and our @NASA customers for this amazing accomplishment that opens the door for future missions to the Moon and Mars.”
The venture, dubbed “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” comes a little more than a year after the first-ever commercial landing on the moon.
Travel to the Moon
About the size of a small vehicle, Blue Ghost took off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on January 15. Prior to making its uncrewed landing on Sunday close to an old volcanic vent on Mare Crisium, a basin on the Moon’s Earth-facing side, the lander tightened its lunar orbit.
In the new space race, Firefly’s mission was one of three ongoing lunar missions; other improvements were made by Houston-based Intuitive Machines and Japan’s ispace.
Pic Courtsey-Youtube
“T-2 hours until #BlueGhost performs a Descent Orbit Insertion and begins her trajectory towards our final destination: the Moon’s Mare Crisium,” Firefly Aerospace had announced prior to the landing as an update on the last descent phase. In a scheduled communications blackout, this 19-second burn will take place on the Moon’s far side. Our #GhostRiders will do a health check to ensure the route to Mare Crisium is clean as soon as we regain signal, which should happen around 20 minutes after the burn.
Goals of science
A lunar soil analyser, a radiation-resistant computer, and an experiment evaluating the viability of employing worldwide satellite navigation for lunar travel are among the ten scientific instruments the lander is carrying. In order to better understand how dust levitates under solar influence—an effect that Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan first noticed—Blue Ghost will also record a lunar sunset.
The project is in line with NASA’s Artemis program, which uses commercial enterprises to explore the moon. For this mission, Firefly has landed a $101 million NASA contract. Before being rendered inactive by the cold lunar night, the lander will be in operation for 14 days.
