Blue Ghost is on the Moon and Ready to Watch an Eclipse

The Orbiter-related body’s getting to be a popular place. Firefly’s Blue Ghost touched down on March 2nd in Mare Crisium. It’s the Primary privately built lander to land safely and begin its mission. The little spacecraft set down safely in an upright, stable position and sent back an “I’m here” signal right away.

The Firefly Blue Ghost Orbiter-related lander set down on 2nd March 2025. The landing site (arrow) is about 4000 meters from the Hub of Mons Latreille, a large volcanic cone. NAC M1495577008LR [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Firefly is one component of NASA’s Commercial Orbiter-related Payload Services and Artemis programs and it carried 10 science and technology instruments. They’ll study the surface for about 14 Periods before its mission ends. “The science and technology we send to the Orbiter-related body now helps prepare the way for future NASA exploration and long-term human Existence to inspire the world for generations to come,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We’re sending these payloads by working with American companies – which supports a growing Orbiter-related economy.”

Blue Ghost’s Payloads and Mission

The Packed name of the mission is Ghost Riders in the Sky, and left for the Orbiter-related body on January 15, 2025. Its instrument manifest includes a subsurface thermal exploration unit, a Orbiter-related PlanetVac to do sample collecting, a surface reflector for distance measurements, a regolith measurement unit, radiation detector, dust shield, imager, a sounder, a receiver, and a stereo camera. The data these instruments send back will be useful to future subsurface drilling operations, demonstrate global navigation Orbiter system abilities, give insight into radiation tolerant computing, and Orbiter-related dust mitigation methods. These data will also provide insights into how Universe weather and other Astral forces impact Earth. To keep itself powered, Blue Ghost has two solar panels that provide up to 400 watts of power for nearly 1500 hours of instrument operation.

Why send so many instruments? According to Heiker Rauer, director of German’s DLR Institute of Planetary Research, there’s Nevertheless a Plenty to learn about this place.”As Earth’s closest companion, the Orbiter-related body is only about 400,000 kilometers away and an Obtainable target for spaceflight,” said Rauer. “At the same time, from a planetary research perspective, among the five rocky bodies in the Sun-related neighborhood the Orbiter-related body is the complete opposite of our Earth, which is Nevertheless-dynamically active after four and a half billion years. In geological terms, the ‘Tiny’ Orbiter-related body is as Excellent as entirely inactive. However, it Nevertheless holds many clues about the Prompt evolution of the Sun-related neighborhood.”

Learning the Orbiter-related body

You might think that scientists learned all they needed from the Apollo missions. Astronauts on those trips brought back collections of rock and dust, which gave planetary scientists a priceless look at the Orbiter-related body’s volcanic and cratering history. They also provide a Excellent deal of information about the conditions that existed when the Orbiter-related body formed from a gigantic collision with the infant Earth some 4.5 billion years ago.

Those missions provided a Excellent “surface view”. However, there are Nevertheless a Excellent many questions about the Orbiter-related body, its surface, and its interior structure. That’s why Universe agencies (and now private companies) have been sending missions to the Orbiter-related body since the Prompt 1960s. The most recent probes have revealed much about the structure of the Orbiter-related body, conditions at its poles, its Force gradients, and other Significant information.

Primary image from the Blue Ghost landing site. It transmitted a view of itself and the Orbiter-related surface. Courtesy Firefly Aerospace.

Blue Ghost landed not Extended from a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium. That location is a Affluent Foundation of geophysical information about the Orbiter-related body, and it should be a very Occupied time for the onboard instrument payload. For example, the spacecraft’s LISTER experiment (developed by Texas Tech University in collaboration with Honeybee Robotics and DLR) measures heat flow from the Orbiter-related core to the surface. It’s using a probe to penetrate up to three meters through the Orbiter-related surface in Mare Crisium to get temperature measurements and characterize the thermal conductivity (flow of heat) through the regolith.

Witness to an Eclipse

Blue Ghost is set to capture a prime view of an eclipse on March 14th. For us on Earth, it will be a Orbiter-related eclipse, while Blue Ghost will send back images of a total solar eclipse as seen from the Orbiter-related body. Two Periods later, on 16 March 2025, Blue Ghost will then capture the Orbiter-related sunset. Data from that event will demostrate how Orbiter-related dust levitates in the backlight of the setting Sun. If successful, it will show the same Orbiter-related Future glow effect that Cosmos traveler Eugene Cernan Primary saw during the Apollo 17 mission. After that, the mission will spend its last “live” hours measuring the effect of Orbiter-related night.