Firefly Blue Ghost Makes History by Landing Spacecraft on the Moon

This Sunday, Firefly Aerospace became the second private company to soft-land a spacecraft on the moon. The Texas-based startup has released a video of when its Blue Ghost lander landed on the lunar surface.

The video shows the Blue Ghost landing on its four legs just north of the Moon’s equator, within the ancient volcanic basin known as Mare Crisium. The basin contains a notable volcanic feature called Mons Latreille, which Blue Ghost is expected to study for two weeks. However, once darkness and extreme cold envelop the landing zone, the lander will be unable to continue operations due to its complete reliance on solar-powered technology.

According to NASA, the sponsor of this mission, all ten of the agency’s science instruments and technology demonstrators aboard Blue Ghost are still operational and functioning as intended. Among these instruments is the Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder, which will probe the Moon’s interior to depths of up to 1,126 km, helping NASA better understand the thermal history of the moon. Another key instrument is the Electrodynamic Dust Shield, designed to remove lunar dust from the spacecraft’s surface using electrical currents.

This technology aims to address a major challenge faced by NASA’s manned missions in the 20th century when the moon dust managed to damage camera visors and lenses additionally historic achievement happened during this mission when The Lunar Global Navigation Satellite System Receiver Experiment or LuGRE managed to send GPS signal from the moon to the earth.

The successful landing of the Blue Ghost spacecraft marks a historic milestone in lunar exploration, as it becomes the first of two lunar landers developed by separate Texas-based aerospace companies to embark on a mission to the Moon’s surface this week.