Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander safely touched down in the eastern part of the Moon’s Mare Crisium.
Image credit: ASU/NASA GSFC
The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost lunar lander continues to check off operations of its science experiments.
Blue Ghost successfully landed in Mare Crisium on March 2 and is now operating payloads for a complete lunar day (about 14 Earth days).
Firefly Aerospace reports that eight out of ten NASA-sponsored payloads have met their mission objectives – “with more action to come.”
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace
Science activities
Those reported science activities on the Moon are:
Surface Access Arm deployment of the Lunar PlanetVac (LPV): Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company
Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS): NASA Kennedy Space Center
Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR): University of Maryland
A Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR) sits on an adjustable multidirectional mount.
Image credit: International Laser Ranging Service
Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC): Aegis Aerospace
Radiation Tolerant Computer (RadPC): Montana State University
Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE): Italian Space Agency (ASI); NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER): Texas Tech University
Stereo CAmera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS): NASA Langley Research
In a video, the Lunar PlanetVac is shown successfully collecting, transferring, and sorting lunar soil from the Moon using pressurized nitrogen gas.
Go to: https://youtu.be/5drBYiUCCsg?si=TVuWcbyRomBkqmi4