by The Blue Ghost Lander from Firefly Aerospace closed on Saturday at the moon on the moon on the early Sunday at the course for an automatic descent to the touchdown of the nail biting rampart, the first of three robot moon countries in the private sector, which reach its destination after the start of this year.
The Blue Ghost Lunar Lander circled the earth for a month after the start On a Falcon 9 rocket in JanuaryWith Firefly flight controllers in Austin, Texas, a lot of time to activate and test your system and science burdens before going to the moon.
The impression of an artist from the Blue Ghost Lander on the surface of the moon. / Credit: Firefly Aerospace
There, the spaceship spent 16 days on the lunar oral railway to refine its trajectory and radiate the spectacular view of the earth from 240,000 miles away.
After several separation signs to achieve the planned parentage conversion, the 6.6 -foot spaceship is ready for a drop of rocket on the surface. The touchdown at Mare Crisium – the sea of the crises – is expected around 3:34 a.m. est near an old volcanic characteristic called Mons Latreille.
The solar -powered country is expected to work for a full lunar day or 14 earth days. If everything goes well, it can be operated for a few hours in the dark moon night with battery stream before it is silent.
Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly, said Blue Ghost was the latest example of the commercial technology of the private sector, “reducing the costs and affordability of (space) systems”.
“A long time ago in a blue moon, this type of moonlander landed billions of dollars and countries (you) on the moon,” he said in an interview before the start with CBS News.
“This is Firefly Aerospace, which ends up on the cost of a fixed price contract on the moon and does this with the latest commercial technology,” he said. “Just like Simone Biles, landing at the Olympic Games, we will do the same for the state of Texas, for America and for the world.”
The NASA paid Firefly Aerospace $ 101 million in order to bear 10 science instruments sponsored by the agency as part of the “Commercial Lunar Payoad Services) initiative at a price of $ 44 million for the moon.
The CLPS program aims to encourage the private industry to start the payload of agencies to the moon in order to collect the necessary science and engineering data before Artemis -astronauts later start working on the surface near the south pole of the lunar bar.
In the on -board cameras, spectacular views of the cratered surface of the moon gained from the orbit while waiting for the descent to the touchdown. / Credit: Firefly Aerospace
“One day we will get there about the commercial aspects of the moon,” said Kim. “There will be a lot of business plans that can be borne and grow. It is a great place to often test new missions to maintain life in space, and it is also a springboard for Mars.”
Another moonlander, a spaceship called “Resilience”, which was built by Ispace in Tokyo, was another moonlander who took part in the same Falcon 9 rocket with the Blue Ghost on board the same Falcon 9 rocket. The company sent another country to the moon last year, but it fell on the surface after it had no fuel due to a software error.
For the second attempt by Ispace, the appropriately mentioned resilience has run a long, energy -like path to the moon and is expected to take its landing attempt in May.
Another moonland that is built by intuitive machines in Houston and is known as Athena. was launched last Wednesday of another Falcon 9 and will probably land on the moon on March 6.
Athena was also largely financed by the NASA CLPS program, which agreed to pay the company 62.5 million US dollars for a demanding exercise and a mass spectrometer to the moon.
NASA gave Nokia a “Tipping Point” contract for $ 15 million in order to test mobile phone communication on the moon and a further $ 41 million of intuitive machines for a rocket-powered “hopper” that will start looking for ice inserts in a permanently shaded crater.
Fireflys Lander has 10 instruments, including cameras, a drill, a drill that is aligned in the surface below the spacecraft, a radiation-tolerant computer, with which attempts are made to pull GPS navigation signals from the earth, an experiment to learn more about the administration of moon dust in order to monitor the dust distributed by the country’s rocket engines.
“One of the core purposes of the CLPS program with NASA is to be a forerunner of Artemis who obviously sends people back to the moon,” said Ray Allensworth, program director of Firefly’s SpaceCraft.
“So our payloads collect data so that we can find out what it feels like to be on the moon surface, to work on the lunar surface? So all this data will inform if we actually return humans to the moon.”
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