Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander may have only just touched down on the moon, but it’s already beaming home spectacular views of Earth from the lunar surface after a historic landing today (March 2).
These incredible images from the moon taken by the private Blue Ghost lander were shared by its builder, Firefly Aerospace, just hours after the lunar landing.
Blue Ghost touched down in Mare Crisium (the Sea of Crises), after deftly performing two hazard avoidance maneuvers and achieving a precision landing within 328 feet (100 meters) of its target zone near the volcanic feature Mons Latreille.
“This is an incredibly challenging technical feat to pull off, to land, anything on the surface of the moon,” Joel Kearns, Deputy Associate Administrator for exploration in NASA Science Mission Directorate said during the press conference.
Shortly after landing, Firefly Aerospace unveiled this image from the surface of the moon, it is the first image acquired by the Blue Ghost lunar lander. The images were released by Blue Ghost’s S-band imagery, with higher resolution X-band imagery expected in the next few hours when the lander deploys its main antenna.
Firefly opted to forgo a live video stream of the landing from the Blue Ghost to free up communications bandwidth for telemetry and for several instruments that were in action during the descent, including a critical hazard avoidance system that helped the lander avoid at least two potentially dangerous boulders on the surface, according to Ray Allensworth, Firefly’s spacecraft program director.
“NASA expected it to be relatively hazard free, but that doesn’t mean there’s no hazards, so you always have to be prepared for that,” Allensworth said in the briefing. “And the lander was, and we were able to operate around that and land safely.”
The second image captured by the Blue Ghost lander shows the lander sitting on the moon’s surface with a distant pale blue dot — Earth — in the background.
If you take a closer look at Earth reflected in the lander’s panels, you can make out distinct details of our home planet.
Shortly before the press conference ended, Firefly released this stunning image from the surface of the moon.
“We’re all in that picture,” one of the panelists said.
With the landing complete, Blue Ghost will now begin 14 days of surface operations, the equivalent of one full lunar day.
“This next 14 days is going to be really challenging, and we’re going to work to provide all the science data from all 10 clips payloads, but I’m confident that the team will get through it,” Jason Kim, Firefly Aerospace CEO said during the press conference.
A major highlight of the mission will take place on March 14, when Blue Ghost captures high-definition images of a total eclipse as Earth obscures the sun from the moon’s perspective. Meanwhile, those of us on Earth will witness the same event as a total lunar eclipse, turning the moon a deep, eerie red.
On March 16, the lander will document the lunar sunset and study how levitating dust behaves in response to solar activity, a phenomenon first observed during Apollo 17.
Leading up to the landing, Blue Ghost traveled 2.8 million miles over 45 days, downlinking 27 GB of data and supporting scientific studies, including record-breaking signal tracking from the Global Navigation Satellite System and radiation measurements through the Van Allen Belts.
With the hardest part behind them, Firefly is now focused on completing surface operations and continuing to demonstrate the capabilities of commercial lunar missions.
Article by:Source: daisy.dobrijevic@space.com (Daisy Dobrijevic)
