Lunar Landing: Firefly's Blue Ghost Capsule Now on the Moon – Anticipating Future Events
Two Private Landers Touch Down on the Moon
In a significant milestone for space exploration, two private landers, the Blue Ghost lunar lander and the Athena lander, have successfully touched down on the Moon.
The Blue Ghost lunar lander, launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on January 15 on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, made a soft landing on the Moon on Sunday, February 15, at 3:34 a.m. ET. It landed in Mare Crisium, a site of an ancient asteroid impact once filled with basaltic lava. The lander is packed with 10 NASA instruments designed to probe the lunar surface and gather data to support future human missions to the Moon.
The Japanese space agency currently involved with the mission is the private Japanese company, ispace. The company's Resilience lander performed a flyby of the Moon on February 15, and is scheduled for touchdown in April. The NASA instruments on the Blue Ghost lander are designed to test subsurface drilling on the Moon, regolith sample collection, a global navigation satellite system, and lunar dust mitigation methods.
Texas-based Firefly Aerospace became the second company to land on the Moon with its Blue Ghost lunar lander. According to Firefly Aerospace, the company successfully communicated with its lander following touchdown. The Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down within a 328-foot (100-meter) target next to a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille.
Two days after touchdown, the Blue Ghost lander will attempt to capture a sunset from the surface of the Moon and collect data on how lunar dust levitates due to influences from the Sun. After the Sun sets, both the Resilience and Athena landers will continue to snap imagery of the levitating lunar dust to observe how its behavior changes after sunset.
The Athena lander, launched by Intuitive Machines, blasted off on February 26 and is scheduled to touch down on the Moon on Thursday, March 6. The stationary lander will spend a full lunar day (or the equivalent of 14 days on Earth) exploring the dusty surface of the Moon.
This is the first time that more than one private lander is en route to the Moon at the same time, marking a significant step towards a growing lunar economy and the advancement of NASA exploration and long-term human presence on the Moon. Both landers (Resilience and Athena) are contributing to the advancement of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which aims to encourage private companies to develop lunar landing capabilities and deliver payloads to the Moon's surface.
On March 14, ispace's Resilience lander will attempt to capture high-definition imagery of a total eclipse from the Moon. This mission is set to further our understanding of the Moon and pave the way for future lunar exploration.
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