WASHINGTON: A US company successfully landed its spacecraft on the Moon on Sunday (Mar 2) after a long journey through space, marking only the second private mission to achieve the milestone — and the first to do so upright.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 touched down shortly after 3.34am US Eastern time (4.34, pm Singapore time) near Mons Latreille, a volcanic formation in Mare Crisium on the Moon’s northeastern near side.
“Y’all stuck the landing, we’re on the Moon,” an engineer at mission control in Austin, Texas, called out as the team erupted in cheers.
A first image is expected soon. CEO Jason Kim later confirmed that the spacecraft was “stable and upright” — in contrast to the first private landing last February, which came down sideways.
“We’re on the Moon!” Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, rejoiced.
Nicknamed “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” the mission comes just over a year after the first-ever commercial lunar landing and is part of a NASA partnership with industry to cut costs and support Artemis, the program aiming to return astronauts to the Moon.
The golden lander, about the size of a hippopotamus, launched on Jan 15 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, capturing stunning footage of Earth and the Moon along the way. It shared a ride with a Japanese company’s lander set to attempt a landing in May.
Blue Ghost carries 10 instruments, including a lunar soil analyser, a radiation-tolerant computer and an experiment testing the feasibility of using the existing global satellite navigation system to navigate the Moon.
Designed to operate for a full lunar day (14 Earth days), Blue Ghost is expected to capture high-definition imagery of a total eclipse on Mar 14, when Earth blocks the Sun from the Moon’s horizon.
On Mar 16, it will record a lunar sunset, offering insights into how dust levitates above the surface under solar influence – creating the mysterious lunar horizon glow first documented by Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan.
Source: CNA
