The Blue Ghost lander captured a stunning photo of the moon rising early in its new location. The craft is already at work, and two of its “colleagues” that launched on the same rocket are expected to land soon.
Image source: x.com/Firefly_Space
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost landed near Mons Latreille, a lonely peak in the Mare Crisium basin in the northeastern part of the Moon’s visible side, on Sunday, March 2. The spacecraft has already begun work, taking stunning images of the local area and distant Earth as it appears from the lunar surface. The day before, on March 3, Firefly published a new image on the X social network, in which a bright star contrasts with the dark craters of the uneven lunar surface.
«”Rise and shine! The Firefly Blue Ghost lander captured its first sunrise on the Moon, marking the start of the lunar day and surface activities at its new home,” the post reads. “Many” of NASA’s 10 science instruments have already turned on and will continue to operate over the next two weeks and into the lunar night, when the mission involving the solar array will end. The instruments are designed to study a variety of subjects, including lunar composition, geology, heat flow, and space weather. Blue Ghost will also test drilling technology, and its camera will capture dust flying over the surface in the sunset.
Blue Ghost launched into space on January 15 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket; it landed successfully 46 days later. The craft was selected as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, where the US space agency contracts with private contractors to send scientific and technical equipment to the Moon. Yesterday, the second craft, Intuitive Machines Athena IM-2, also participating in the CLPS program, entered lunar orbit. On Thursday, March 6, mission operators will attempt to land it near the Moon’s South Pole. The same rocket also launched the Resilience lander from Tokyo’s iSpace, which is following its own extended trajectory to the Moon, with landing planned for late May or early June.