NASA Science Touches Down on Moon Aboard Firefly Aerospace Lander
Carrying a suite of NASA science and technology payloads to the Moon, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 touched down on the lunar surface at 3:34 a.m. EST on Sunday.
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.
Over the next couple hours, 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.
NASA will host a media briefing approximately two hours after landing. This concludes our live landing coverage. Continue to follow along for more CLPS updates: nasa.gov/clps.
