Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost moon lander mission was full of surprises
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Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Lunar Lander seized stunning views of the moon after the second moon’s second moon maneuver on February 24, 2025. Credit: Firefly Aerospace
Colorado Springs, Colorado-The lessons learned and surprises are reinforced from the first successful Lunar Lander task completely successful chances of automated and human operations in the long term on the moon.
The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission 1 He landed safely on March 2 Inside the drop area in the targeted horse. Its four legs fall on the landing, delivery of the spacecraft Ten scientific tools And the initiative to explain technology through the Commercial Lunar Attraction Initiative (CLPS).
Blue ghost She completed more than 14 days of surface operations within 346 hours of daylight, and her life extends for a short period 5 hours on the super night night.
center of gravity
Jasson Kim, CEO of Firefly, recalls during the fortieth space seminar held here from April 7 to 10 by the Space Foundation in Boudour.
Kim said that the flight to the moon included seven main burns to the engines, and it would do so with the company’s internal engine technology that was accurately performing. “So we will use this engine over and over again.”
Kim said that a key to landing on the Blue Ghost spot is to plan the variable block properties of the spacecraft, to make sure of the constantly changing gravitational center in the craft. The team was smart enough to design the car with four fuel tanks, along with.
Kim told the audience: “So, this balanced design truly helped landing on the moon and sticking to this landing,” Kim told the public. “This is only what commercial companies do. They reach creative solutions and innovation to attack the problem.” He said Firefly conducted strong tests that included 500 hours of rehearsals using multiple system design simulations.
Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly, Blue Ghost Lunar Lander details. | Credit: Space Corporation
Doubled by autonomy
The success of another reference list was the independent landing of Blue Ghost.
Kim said: “There was no interruption in communication that we had to feel anxious,” Kim said.
As a great believer in self -rule, Kim said that the company is multiplied by this ability. “Every spacecraft that is moving forward will get a level of autonomy,” he said, as this is the place where the future is going. “
Lander Lunar Lunar from Firefly Aerospace seized this shot from its shadow on the moon immediately after landing on March 2, 2025. Credit: Firefly Aerospace
Discover a surprise
After landing, Blue Ghost immediately got action.
Kim rolled with two loads, Leicester exercises to investigate the surface moon and the lunar plane that succeeded in collecting, transporting and sorting the moon from the moon using compressed nitrogen gas. It has been shown to be a low -cost solution, a lower mass to collect future automatic samples.
Lister was jointly developed by the University of Texas Tech and Honeybee Robotics, a blue origin company that also provided lunar Planetvac.
Lister, which has three unprecedented feet instead of 10 expected feet, “has truly hit some solid rock formations,” relevant “, and this is the whole discovery. We have learned so much that we did not know it.”
It was amazing from the result of the Blue Ghost moon temperature.
“No one has appeared on the moon’s surface. We discovered that it was hotter than expected and mixed.” Kim said that he actually starts closer and continues for a longer period, noting that the temperature swinging on the surface of the moon “was really crazy.”
Read more: Watch the sparks fly while Blue Ghost Lander performs in the moon (video)
Moon devices for surface thermal exploration with fast training on the Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Moon Lander training on the moon. | Credit: Firefly Aerospace
The heat generated by a nozzle
In addition to the temperature revelation was the discovery of another blue ghost.
Kim said: “We did not know that we would fall next to a huge hole. The sun was hit by one side and heated us. But the sun was reflected on one side of that hole and hit us from the back. So we actually became more hot because of this reason.” “So there is a very new discovery that we have found and we can move this forward to other CLPS tasks.”
Kim said that all the components of lunar landing work through thermal fluctuations, although it exceeded its thermal borders.
“Therefore, in the future, we know that we need to design the geographical features of the moon much better with high sincerity,” Kim added.
Shade
Mission Blue Ghost came with the idea of ​​”Beat the Heat” smart during the moon’s operations.
When Lander was passing through the lunar appearance and was excessively heating, the operators wanted the land to make sure to maintain radio operations.
The Blue Ghost rectangular antenna on Lander’s upper deck was equipped with the shading of the area where the radio was contained.
“We are from Texas until we know about the shade,” Kim said. In fact, this approach “which was made in the shade” brought back the radio formation.
Blue Ghost, which lasted five hours on the moon, also provided some ready -made meal messages.
Kim said: “NASA wanted to manage the load, so we did so, and we have already got some of the beneficial load data,” Kim said. “Lester was the last load load. It was very amazing.”
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Moon Lander seized this image of the lunar sunset on March 16, 2025. Credit: Firefly Aerospace
Stay alive at night
Kim said that the information obtained from the short invasion to the moon’s night shows that there are ways to design Lunar Lander in a normative way to stay and prosper at night.
Blue ghost batteries used on the ground of expectations exceeded expectations. With a standard approach, Kim said that more batteries can be added in the future to maintain specific ingredients, allowing them to live during the cold moon night. “We can add radiators as well,” he said.
Looking forward, Firefly intensifies the annual tasks to the moon.
The team began the qualifiers and assembly of the Blue Ghost Mission-2, which will use Firefly Blue Ghost Lander, stacked on the Eletra Dark tropical vehicle for the operations in the orbit of the moon and on the other side of the moon.
Read more: Watch the sunset over the moon in an epic video of Private Blue Ghost Lunar Lander
Additional design
Related stories:
– “We are on the surface of the moon!” Private Ghost Moon Moon Lander Aces Historic Landing for Nasa
– Watch the sparks fly while Blue Ghost Lander performs in the moon (video)
– Watch the sunset over the moon in an epic video of Private Blue Ghost Lunar Lander
Kim said this remote side, also designed to work for 14 days on the moon, depends on a slightly gradual design for the Blue Ghost-1 mission. He said: “It will require us to have an extension orbit, to provide contacts to and from Earth, so we will run a spacecraft simultaneously.”
Orbiter is expected to continue in the moon a few years, “note Kim,” so we are already looking to put things like high -resolution cameras on them. “
In the evaluation of The Blue Ghost Mission-1, Kim greeted the 750 employees of the company that includes the commitment of the 60-people Lander team and bold curricula.
“For some of them, this was the first spacecraft … they have never built and operated a spacecraft, but they allowed it,” Kim said. He said that the 101 million dollar task called on the team to do everything it requires to dismantle problems, and to maintain the program at the cost and the schedule.
He concluded that “it cannot be stopped.”