Firefly Aerospace shared a thrilling video on Wednesday showing how the Moon landing of its Blue Ghost lander came about. Featuring flight director Jesus Charles, the footage is a montage of the landing process which began 16 days after Blue Ghost entered the Moon's orbit.
Blue Ghost made a historic landing on March 2, making Firefly the first private company to be fully successful in a lunar touchdown.
"Blue Ghost riders, path to the stars is no longer limited to nations alone," Charles says in the video. "Firefly is building the road to the next frontier, one mission, one dream at a time," he added with an overlayed footage of Blue Ghost slowly descending to the surface.
"Tonight, we didn't just reach another mission milestone, together we created a moment in history."
Blue Ghost's landing process began with the descent orbit insertion when it was approximately 100 kilometres above surface. It gradually lowered its altitude while reducing its speed via engine burns of varying duration. The most harrowing stage was the Powered Descent Initialisation (PDI) which was executed perfectly, as the video shows.
The surface area grew larger as Blue Ghost approached the surface with a glowing Earth in the background. We get the first glimpse of the lander's shadow when it was just a few metres above the surface, before the lunar dust blowing off due to the engine thrust completely engulfs it. As the dust settles, we see Blue Ghost parked on an elevated surface with a clear view of Earth.
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The lander is currently in the Mare Crisium region on the near side of the Moon. In an update earlier today, Firefly revealed that four of 10 NASA payloads onboard the lander have been deployed.
"Blue Ghost has been busy since parking on the Moon! Just in the last two days, the data we've downlinked jumped from 27 GB to 57 GB as we continue NASA payload operations, Firefly posted on X. "This includes deploying Lunar PlanetVac and sampling lunar regolith, deploying the Electrodynamic Dust Shield and demonstrating dust mitigation, capturing images from SCALPSS, and continuing operations for the other payloads."
Blue Ghost will function for 14 days on the lunar surface, conducting experiments and technology demonstrations for future Moon missions. On March 14, it will also observe an eclipse (Earth blocking the Sun) and collect data on dust levitation during lunar sunset on March 16.
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(Image: Firefly Aerospace)