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A parade of Mondlander-Developed by companies in the private sector is on the way to the moon, part of a convoy of the robot room vehicle, which the NASA and its partner agencies hope to pave up astronauts in order to return later this decade.
The Firefly Aerospace, based in Texas, comes first. The company’s 6.6 -foot Blue Ghost Lunar Lander is on the right track to land on the moon at 2:34 a.m. CT (3:34 a.m.) on Sunday.
Success is not guaranteed. In February 2023, another space company based in Texas, intuitive machines, the first private sector company that has a vehicle on the moon soft land, but on the whole, about half of all lunar landing attempts came to a failure.
Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly, told CNN in December that the construction of Rockets of his company gave him a high degree of trust in Blue Ghost’s drive systems.
“We use (reaction control system) engines that we have developed in our own house and designed by the same people who design our rocket engines. That reduces the risk, ”said Kim. “Everything that gives us a high level of self -confidence when we have humans who really do rocket engines very well – some of the best in the world.”
Well -functioning engines are important because Blue Ghost must drastically slow its speed without the help of a thick atmosphere. The lander also has to rely on complex navigation and control software and hardware that tries to keep the vehicle properly aligned because it is tailored to the Tachschern crater moon surface.
When he is successful, Firefly promises to deliver an exciting show. The lander is equipped with important sensors that are packed in four legs that protrude from its box -shaped body.
“A few minutes will pass before we share all this information,” said Kim. According to Kim, however, these sensors can tell Firefly’s mission control in moments whether the landing attempt was successful.
“With all our video cameras, we can also have data that (in minutes) is sent to our mission Operations Center,” he said. The first pictures from the mission should be delivered about half an hour after the touchdown, Firefly told CNN.
Blue Ghost’s Suite of Science Equipment
The mission aims to land near an old volcanic characteristic called Mons Latreille, which is located on the Far Eastern edge of the visible face of the moon north of the equator.
The planned landing site of Blue Ghost by Mons Latreille (insert) in mare crick. – CNN/NASA
The team selected the location because “it avoids large magnetic anomalies (or interruptions) on the lunar surface, which could disturb some of our payload measurements,” said Ryan Watkins, the program scientist for the Exploration Science Strategy and Integration Office of NASA, during an examination in December.
The Blue Ghost is equipped with 10 science instruments and technological demonstrations of NASA, some of which have already started to collect data when the moonland between the earth and the moon crossed the emptiness of around 239,000 miles (384,400 kilometers).
The equipment includes a device that tests on the orbit and on the moon surface how GPS services can be used, a vacuum that aims to absorb the floor, and a telescope that is observed, as the protective magnetic field of the earth, is also known as the magnetosphere.
Firefly also expects the spaceship to provide breathtaking pictures of its landing site.
During his 14 operations on the moon, Blue Ghost photographs a solar eclipse in which the earth blocks the sun’s rays from the surface of the moon for about five hours. The vehicle is also expected to make a phenomenon that astronauts have seen more than 50 years ago.
“There is a phenomenon called the lunar horizon (scattered light caused by floating electrostatic particles) that only the astronauts of Apollo 15 and 17 have seen with their eyes,” said Kim. “We will be able to capture this in 4k-Mal 4K high definition videos and to share this with the rest of the world.”
Fireflys Blue Ghost continues to collect data for a few hours on the moon night – when the brutally cold conditions push the landing zone near Mons Latreille in shade and the temperatures could fall as cold as minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 173 degrees Celsius).
The case of the moon night usually wrote the end for moonlanders. But NASA wants Blue Ghost to choose. The space agency even increased the value of the contract that it pays to Firefly -from 93 million US dollars to 101 million US dollars -so that the company was able to prepare the lander to survive such cold temperatures, said Kim.
The Blue Ghost Lander is part of NASA (CLPS, initiative.
The program is a concerted effort by the space agency to encourage the private sector to develop moonlanders, in the hope that their robot exploration astronauts will pave the way to return to the moon for the first time in 50 years as part of the Artemis program.
Currently, 14 companies can be offered on CLPS contracts that provide money to carry out moon landings. So far, two companies – astrobot technology and intuitive machines – have tried missions, but only the latter have made a soft touchdown.
The first mission of Astrobotic last year failed shortly after the orbit was reached due to drive problems. And while the mission of the intuitive machines was largely successful, his lander tipped over and limited the time she could serve.
The Blue Ghost is now in the transit to the moon, since two more vehicles from the private sector pursue their own approaches. Intuitive machines’ second lander started on Wednesday and drives to the south polar region of the moon. And this spring will try to try to redeem the company’s failed first attempt in 2023 this spring.
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