‘Moon dust on our boots’: Blue Ghost lunar landing succeeds on first attempt
The landing site lies in Mare Crisium, a flat plain formed from lava that filled and hardened inside a crater carved out by an ancient asteroid impact. Mare Crisium is in the north-east quadrant of the near side of the moon.
Staff at the Mission Control outside Austin, Texas, celebrate as lunar lander Blue Ghost touches down on the moon with a special delivery for NASA.Credit: AP
The mission is to last about 14 Earth days.
The lander is carrying 10 instruments for NASA as part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS. Several are focused on lunar dust, which is often sticky and sharp – a bane for machinery and a potential health issue for astronauts.
Firefly has won two more CLPS missions.
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The second, scheduled to launch next year, is to land on the far side of the moon. The third, scheduled for 2028, is to investigate the Gruithuisen Domes, an unusual volcanic region on the near side of the moon.
The moon will continue to be a busy place. Another CLPS mission is just days away. Intuitive Machines’ second moon lander, Athena, is scheduled to land on Thursday.
And yet another spacecraft is also en route. On the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched Blue Ghost to orbit was Resilience, a lunar lander built by Ispace of Japan.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
