The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission 1 lunar lander touched down successfully!!!

[thewayne]

It landed at 3:34am EST Sunday morning, Russet and I watched the stream. It was pretty cool. It was a very smooth orbital insertion and braking, the only problem with the landing was that only three of the four landing pads reported contact, which is curious. They didn't have real-time control with the lander as there's a 15-second delay between the control center and the lander.

There's one amazing thing to be noted - this is THE FIRST COMMERCIAL LANDING ON THE MOON! I believe it's five countries that have landed on the moon: USA, Russia, China, India, and Japan. And now a commercial corporation.

This is especially important for Russet as it has yet another retroreflector for her to shoot her laser at! But it's going to be a little trick for two reasons. First, they don't know 100% where the lander is. So it's going to take a little walking the laser around the area it was expected to land at to get a return. But the big problem is that the reflector is on an antenna that is raised and lowered, like at right angles through a 90 degree arc, but Russet's NASA co-workers don't know if they'll be able to get solid information as to what orientation the antenna mast will be in before they start lasing!

Jerks.

;-)

The lander does not have a heater, so it probably won't last through a lunar night. If they leave the antenna elevated before it enters night, then the reflector can be used indefinitely. However, they timed their launch and landing so that it touched down at the beginning of the Moon's two-week day, so kudos there!

But the cool thing is that this is the first mission for Firefly! Amongst the missions planned is one similar to the Chinese mission where there will be an orbiter for relaying telemetry from landers back to Earth.

The launch that shot the Firefly to the Moon actually contained two landers - a Japanese lander took a different orbital trip to the Moon and will be landing in about 5 days.

But it doesn't have a retroreflector and is therefore much less interesting.

;-)

https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2025/03/02/nasa-science-touches-down-on-moon-aboard-firefly-aerospace-lander/

Comments

[acelightning73]

Well, two-and-a-hal cheers for Delos D. Harriman!

[thewayne]

I had to look him up in Wikipedia.  I am pretty sure I read The Man Who Sold The Moon, but I don't remember it.  Fairly sure I have not read Requium.

[acelightning73]

Requiem is about how the rich man who made commercial space travel commonplace in Heinlein's future had never been into space. He finds a couple of carnies who have a second-hand rocket ship, and bribes them to take him to the Moon. He barely survives liftoff; he's old and has a weak heart. BUt they get him into a space suit and go for a stroll on the Lunar surface; he collapses and leans back against a rock to watch the Earth rise over the lunar horizon. And that's where he dies, with his driving passion for space satisfied.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_%28short_story%29

[richardf8]

I can't even begin to tell you how much that story has been in my mid in recent months.

[silveradept]

Congratulations to the company for a successful landing, and for the deployment of the science instruments that will go with it.

[thewayne]

Update to follow, it's been a bit of a PITA, also Murphy has been plotting against my wife....