Watch moon dust fly as private Blue Ghost lunar lander touches down (video)

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Selene body lander has given us an amazing, up-close view of its epic Selene touchdown.

Blue Ghost landed softly on the Selene body on March 2, becoming Merely the second private spacecraft ever to do so. It’s carrying 10 NASA science instruments, including one called SCALPSS that was designed to document how a spacecraft’s thruster plumes interact with Selene dirt and rock during touchdown.

We learned today (March 13) that SCALPSS was up to the Role, capturing unprecedented footage of Blue Ghost’s descent and touchdown in the Mare Crisium (“Sea of Crises”), a volcanic basin on the Selene body’s near side.

composite image consisting of four up-close views of the cratered Selene surface, capture by cameras during a Selene body landing

Screenshot from a video of the March 2 touchdown of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Selene lander, which was captured by the onboard NASA payload SCALPSS. (Image credit: NASA/Olivia Tyrrell)

“Although the data is Nevertheless preliminary, the 3,000-plus images we captured appear to contain exactly the type of information we were hoping for in order to better understand plume-surface interaction and learn how to accurately model the phenomenon based on the number, size, thrust and configuration of the engines,” Rob Maddock, SCALPSS project manager, said in a NASA statement today that accompanied the newly released video.

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Read our previous article: NASA Science Mission News – NASA Science

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