NASA mission touches down on Moon aboard Firefly Aerospace lander

Washington: Carrying a suite of NASA science and technology payloads to the Moon, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 on Sunday touched down on the lunar surface.

According to a NASA statement, throughout Blue Ghost’s mission, the agency’s scientific instruments aim to test and demonstrate lunar subsurface drilling technology, regolith sample collection capabilities, global navigation satellite system abilities, radiation tolerant computing, and lunar dust mitigation methods.

The data captured could also benefit humans on Earth by providing insights into how space weather and other cosmic forces impact Earth.

Blue Ghost will perform surface commissioning with health checks on each subsystem.

Once completed, the lander will be ready to perform its payload operations and science demonstrations.

Over the next 24 hours, Blue Ghost will deploy its surface access arm with the Electrodynamic Dust Shield and Lunar PlanetVac, calibrate the top deck gimbal to support the Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager, and enable operations for Radiation Tolerant Computer, Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume Surface Studies and the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment, according to the US space agency.

Previously, during this 9-minute braking burn, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander positioned itself above the target landing site and pitched over from a horizontal to a vertical orientation.

This critical burn with all engines reduced Blue Ghost’s orbital velocity from about 5,500 feet per second to 130 feet per second.

After this braking maneuver, Blue Ghost’s main engine shut off with under two minutes to touchdown. The lander’s Reaction Control System thrusters then performed the final descent, pulsing as needed to reduce orbital velocity to about 3 feet per second before touchdown.

Simultaneously, Blue Ghost’s vision navigation system tracked craters, slopes, and rocks to select a hazard free spot within the landing zone.

—IANS