A private lunar lander carrying drills, vacuums and other experiments landed on the moon on Sunday, the latest success of a series of companies hoping to launch their neighbors on Earth before the astronaut mission.
Firefly Aerospace’s blue ghost lander lander landed from the lunar orbit on Autopilot, aiming to crash the slope of an ancient volcanic dome into the impact basin on the northeastern edge of the moon.
After approximately 360,000 kilometers of operations, the company’s mission control outside Austin, Texas was confirmed successfully.
According to Firefly’s Will Coogan, Firefly’s Will Coogan, who is said to be “You’re all logged in.”
The upright and stable landing site makes Fireflies (a startup that started a decade ago) the first private outfit to place a spacecraft on the moon without crashing or falling. Even the country is staggering, with only five claiming success: Russia, the United States, China, India and Japan.
Half an hour after landing, Blue Ghost began sending pictures from the surface, the first one being a selfie, obscured by the sun’s glare. The second shot includes a home run, with blue dots flashing in the black of the space.
The other two companies’ landers wore blue ghost heels in hot water, and the next company is expected to join the moon later this week.
The blue ghost (named after a rare American firefly) has its size and shape. According to the company, the squat four-leg lander is two meters high and 3.5 meters wide, providing additional stability.
Firefly Aerospace, based in the United States, plans to conduct multiple lunar experiments for NASA, while Ispace in Tokyo is another mission for Japan.
Lander launched from mid-January from mid-Florida to bring 10 experiments to NASA’s moon. The space agency paid $101 million in the U.S. ($146 million CDN) for delivery, and $44 million in U.S. science and technology. This is the third mission of NASA’s commercial lunar delivery program, aiming to ignite the lunar economy of competing private enterprises before the emergence of astronauts later this decade.
The exact location is unknown
Firefly’s Ray Allensworth said Lander skipped the dangers, including boulders. Allensworth said the team continued to analyze the data to find out the exact location of the lander, but all signs indicate it landed within the 100-meter target area of the Mare Crisium.
The demo should have two weeks of running time, and then the lander is closed before the moon’s day ends.
It comes with a vacuum to absorb lunar dirt, performs analysis, and performs drill bits to measure temperature depths below three meters below the surface. Also on board: a device to remove grinding lunar dust – a scourge on NASA’s long-term Apollo Moon Walker, who covers it on its spacesuits and equipment.
On the way to the moon, the blue ghosts sided with exquisite pictures of their hometown planet. The lander continued to unconscious in orbit around the moon and shot in detail the surface of the gray marks of the moon. Meanwhile, the signals tracked and received from the US GPS and European Galileo constellations is an encouraging step, a navigation for future explorers, and an inspiring step.
The landing site sets the stage for the new visitors who are fishing to be in the lunar business.
Another lander, a tall, tiny four-meter tall built and operated by Houston’s intuitive machine, landed on the moon Thursday. Its target is the bottom of the moon, just 160 kilometers from the South Pole. It’s closer to the pole than the first lander the company received last year, which is a leg and tilted.
Despite the fall, the intuitive machine’s lander re-landers returned the United States to the moon for the first time since NASA astronauts shut down the Apollo Project in 1972.
The third lander of Japanese company Ispace is still three months away from landing. It shared a rocket trip with Blue Ghost from Cape Canaveral on January 15, taking a longer, windier route. Like intuitive machines, Ispace is also trying to land on the moon for a second time. Its first landers crashed in 2023.
The moon not only emits the wreckage of Ispace, but dozens of other failed attempts over the decades.
Nicky Fox, a senior science officer at the space agency, said NASA hopes to keep pace with two private Lunar Landes each year and realizes that some missions will fail.
“It really opens up a whole new way for us to get more science to land on space and on the moon,” Fox said.
Firefly CEO Jason Kim said the successful Apollo moon landed behind them for billions of dollars, with ace astronauts in charge, private companies have limited budgets, and robotic crafts must land on their own.
Everything is like clockwork, King said.
“We have some moonlight dust on our boots,” King said.
