Blue Ghost lunar lander.
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace
The Blue Ghost Mission 1 spacecraft sitting on the Moon completed more than 14 days of surface operations (346 hours of daylight), and operated just over 5 hours into the super-chilly lunar night.
Final data from the lunar lander was received on March 16.
“This achievement marks the longest commercial operations on the Moon to date,” Firefly Aerospace, builder of the lander, noted in a statement.
Blue Ghost captured imagery of the lunar sunset and provided critical data on how lunar regolith reacts to solar influences during lunar dusk conditions.
Artwork credit: Firefly Aerospace/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Rising from the dead?
Could Blue Ghost rise from the dead given the next burst of daylight at the landing site?
“We did not design our mission 1 hardware to survive the rest of the lunar night, so we don’t expect Blue Ghost to survive,” said Risa Schnautz, Firefly’s director of marketing and communications. “This capability can be a major mission architecture driver for both a lander and its payloads and was not required for this mission.”
On the other hand, Schnautz told Inside Outer Space that Firefly Aerospace ground operators will check back in early April “when there’s daylight again to see if there are any signs of life. It’s of course possible, but not expected.”
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Successful operations
All 10 NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) instruments successfully operated on the lunar surface and collected their science data after Blue Ghost Mission 1’s arrival on the Moon on March 2.
Throughout the mission, Blue Ghost transmitted more than 119 gigabytes (GB) of data back to Earth, including 51 GB of science and technology data, “significantly surpassing Firefly’s mission requirements,” the Cedar, Texas-based group added.
Here are the key payload milestones completed on the lunar surface by Blue Ghost:
LuGRE: Integrated on Blue Ghost’s antenna gimbal on the top deck, LuGRE successfully acquired and tracked Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals, from satellite networks such as GPS and Galileo, on the way to and on the Moon’s surface for the first time. This achievement suggests GPS-like signals could be used to navigate future missions to the Moon and beyond.
NGLR: The Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR) mounted on Blue Ghost’s antenna gimbal successfully reflected laser pulses from Earth-based Lunar Laser Ranging Observatories (LLROs), allowing scientists to precisely measure the Moon’s shape and distance from Earth, expanding our understanding of the Moon’s inner structure.
Every single Firefly employee’s name is etched on the Blue Ghost lunar lander plaque and is now on the Moon’s surface.
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace
LEXI: Mounted on Blue Ghost’s top deck on another Firefly-developed gimbal, the Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) captured a series of X-ray images to study the interaction of solar wind and the Earth’s magnetic field, providing insights into how space weather and other cosmic forces surrounding Earth affect the planet.
LMS: Blue Ghost also deployed four tethered Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) electrodes on the surface, reaching a distance up to 60 feet from the lander, and deployed a six-foot mast above its top deck to enable the payload team to measure electric and magnetic fields and learn more about the Moon’s composition up to 700 miles, or two-thirds the distance to the Moon’s center.
RadPC: Integrated below Blue Ghost’s top deck, RadPC demonstrated a computer that can withstand space radiation while in transit to the Moon, including through the Earth’s Van Allen Belts, and on the Moon’s surface.
RAC: Mounted above Blue Ghost’s lower deck, the Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC) instrument examined how lunar regolith sticks to a range of materials exposed to the Moon’s environment, allowing the industry to better test, improve, and protect spacecraft, spacesuits, and habitats from abrasive regolith.
Image captures LISTER in operation on the Moon.
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace/NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
SCALPSS: Mounted below Blue Ghost’s lower deck, the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) instrument captured images during the spacecraft’s lunar descent and touchdown on the Moon, providing insights into the effects engine plumes have on the surface for future robotics and crewed Moon landings.
LISTER: Also mounted below Blue Ghost’s lower deck, the Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER) payload drilled about three feet into the surface to measure the temperature and flow of heat from the Moon’s interior. This pneumatic, gas-powered drill is now the deepest-reaching robotic planetary subsurface probe.
Lunar PlanetVac: Deployed on Blue Ghost’s surface access arm, the Lunar PlanetVac successfully collected, transferred, and sorted lunar regolith from the Moon using pressurized nitrogen gas, proving to be a low cost, low mass solution for future robotic sample collection.
Lunar PlanetVac deployed by Blue Ghost.
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace
EDS: Also deployed on Blue Ghost’s surface access arm, the Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) successfully lifted and removed lunar regolith using electrodynamic forces on the glass and thermal radiator surfaces. These results confirm EDS as a promising solution for dust mitigation on future lunar and interplanetary surface operations.
What next?
In looking ahead, Firefly Aerospace said it is ramping up for annual missions to the Moon.
“The team has begun qualifying and assembling flight hardware for Blue Ghost Mission 2, which will utilize Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander stacked on an Elytra Dark orbital vehicle for operations in lunar orbit and on the far side of the Moon,” the company said in a statement.
Blue Ghost Mission 2
Artwork: Firefly Aerospace
For more information on Firefly Aerospace, go to:
www.fireflyspace.com