Blue Ghost, an unmanned spacecraft despatched by the Texas-based Firefly Aerospace, has simply landed on the moon.
The lunar touchdown occurred on Sunday, marking the second-ever time a non-public firm landed on the moon. Blue Ghost arrived at 8:34am GMT on the moon’s Earth-facing facet by an historical volcanic formation in Mare Crisium often known as Mons Latreille.
Blue Ghost’s 2.8 million mile journey started on January 15 when it launched onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Blue Ghost’s moon touchdown marks simply the second time ever {that a} non-public U.S. firm has accomplished such a mission. It additionally marks the second time a U.S. spacecraft had landed on the moon since 1972, with the contact down of the manned Apollo 17 mission.
The primary in each these classes got here from the corporate Intuitive Machines, which accomplished the primary non-public moon touchdown in February of 2024.
Mashable Mild Velocity
Nonetheless, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost achieved one thing that Intuitive Machines failed at. When the latter landed on the moon final 12 months, the spacecraft toppled over. Blue Ghost, nevertheless, didn’t. Firefly Aerospace’s spacecraft landed upright.
In line with the Guardian, the Firefly crew “erupted in cheers” upon the corporate’s CEO Jason Kim saying that Blue Ghost was “steady and upright”.
Blue Ghost was launched as a part of NASA’s Industrial Lunar Payload Companies (CLPS) initiative. NASA goals to chop prices utilizing spacecrafts created within the non-public sector as a way to help its Artemis mission, which seems to as soon as once more land astronauts on the moon someday by the tip of the last decade.
NASA geared up the lunar lander with almost a dozen scientific devices and experiments, equivalent to a lunar soil analyzer and a check to verify if current satellite tv for pc navigation programs can be utilized to navigate the moon. Blue Ghost will even doc and {photograph} an eclipse.
Two different non-public firms at the moment have lunar landers en path to the moon, one in every of which is from Intuitive Machines because it tries once more for an upright touchdown.
