Firefly Bids Farewell to its Lunar Lander After 14 Days on the Moon
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Firefly's Blue Ghost lander went gently into the lunar night after spending a full lunar day on the Moon, gathering data and beaming it back to Earth as part of the company's first commercial drop-off mission.
Blue Ghost sent its final transmission on Sunday at 7:15 p.m. ET, wrapping up the longest private mission on the Moon to date. Firefly's lander touched down on the lunar surface on Sunday, March 2, landing in an ancient impact site known as Mare Crisium. After pulling off a flawless touchdown, Blue Ghost got to work on the Moon's dusty surface. The lander completed 14 days of surface operations, deploying its various payloads and transmitting more than 119 gigabytes of data back to Earth. This was the longest the mission could last, as Blue Ghost is not built to survive the frigid lunar night.
There is no such thing as an easy Moon landing, especially on your first attempt," Will Coogan, chief engineer of the Blue Ghost mission at Firefly Aerospace, said in a statement. We battle tested every system on the lander and simulated every mission scenario we could think of to get to this point."
[...] After the Sun set on the Moon, Blue Ghost operated for around five hours into the lunar night before bidding farewell to its mission team. Firefly claims that Blue Ghost met 100 percent of its mission objectives." The company is now gearing up to send annual missions to the Moon, and is already in the process of putting together its Blue Ghost mission 2, which will land on the far side of the Moon.
With its first mission, Firefly became the second company to land on the Moon. Intuitive Machines was the first one to do it in February 2024, but its Odysseus lander tipped over on its side after a not-so-ideal touchdown. The company's follow-up mission also ended up on its side and was declared dead shortly after arriving on the Moon on March 6.
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