Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 lander touched down in the Moon’s Mare Crisium basin at 3:34 am yesterday, marking the second lunar landing by a private company—and the first to land right side up.
The lander is now working on a series of tasks that will last a lunar day—about 14 Earth days—and a few hours into the lunar night.
The mission: Blue Ghost brought 10 science and technology payloads to research conditions on the Moon and test capabilities that will be critical for future crewed Artemis missions.
Many of these payloads will focus on studying lunar dust and regolith:
- Lunar PlanetVac from Honeybee Robotics will take samples of lunar regolith using—you guessed it—a vacuum-like technology.
- The Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC) experiment from Aegis Aerospace will study how lunar dust sticks to a variety of materials, from solar panels to different spacecraft coatings.
- The Electrodynamic Dust Shield from NASA’s KSC will test whether electric fields can remove dust from surfaces.
- The Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) will take images to study how lunar dust spreads during a powered lunar landing.
Other payloads on board include a radiation tolerant computer from Montana State University; a lunar GNSS receiver from NASA and the Italian Space Agency to determine whether Earth’s GNSS capabilities can extend to the Moon; and instruments to better understand solar wind, the lunar thermal environment, and the composition of the Moon’s mantle.
“It’s going to answer so many questions over this one lunar day-long mission. It’s going to really be one for the history books,” Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate, said at Firefly’s landing event. “They made it look easy, and it’s not easy.”
Floodgates open: Firefly may be the first to arrive this year, but more missions are already en route to join Blue Ghost.
- Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander will attempt the company’s second landing on Thursday with payloads onboard to begin the hunt for lunar water ice.
- ispace’s Resilience lander launched in January, but it’s taking the scenic route to the Moon and aims to land later this spring. It will deploy its Tenacious rover, as well as equipment to demonstrate the production of oxygen and hydrogen on the lunar surface.
