Lunar Lander on Blue Ghost now walks around the moon, taking dazzling photos
NASA’s blue ghost moon has arrived on the moon and is now walking around the closest neighbor on earth as it prepares to make its landing next month. And I capture some amazing pictures of his trip.
“Once all the tests are conducted and the mission simulations are completed, we are now fully focused on performance, as we look to finish our orbit operations, we softly touch the moon’s surface and pave the way to the return of humanity to the moon,” Jason Kim, CEO of Blue Ghost Builder Firesompace Aerospace, said in a recent statementS
Blue Ghost Lander is separated from its launch into orbit on Earth on January 15th.
The mission called Ghost Riders in the sky started on January 15 of NASA ‘S Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Week 1: Calibration and eclipses
Just a few days after its launch, Blue Ghost filmed eclipse Where the Earth was passing before the sun. The video is made from the upper deck and goes much faster than on the ground.
Besides, things went as planned. The bigger part of the first week was spent calibrating the various payloads and guaranteeing the right connections and stable before Lander’s trip to the moon. In addition, Blue Ghost filled its first engine burn, which adjusts its orbit in preparation for slingshots from the ground and heads to the moon.
Week 2: Blue marbles and more calibration
During the 2nd week of the mission, Blue Ghost filled its second engine burn, adjusting its orbit around the ground again. His new orbit allowed Lander to capture some truly amazing images as you can see above and In this videoS The bigger part of the second week was spent to adjust its orbit and continued to calibrate its various payments. After two weeks in space, Blue Ghost traveled 715,000 miles and sent more than 7 gigabytes back to the ground.
Blue Ghost is also captured his first photos On its possible destination – the moon.
Week 3: The most epic selfie ever
Week 3 was more than the same, with the calibration of lunar useful loads that approach to completion and more travel preparations are made to the moon. The worldly preparation routine did not prevent agriculture from seeing some cool things. For example, during his preparation, Lander took selfie with himself with the land in the background. Not every day we see selfies containing 8 billion people.
The blue ghost makes selfies with quite literally everyone on Earth at once.
Lander’s cameras also filmed another eclipse. This time it was The land passing in front of the moonS This is not a long video, but we are quite used to seeing the Earth blocking the sun from the moon, not the Earth blocking the moon from the sun.
Week 4: Road trip
In the case of completed preparations, it was time for the blue ghost to be thrown out of the Earth’s orbit and headed to the moon. The farmer took another selfie, this time with the land and the moon together, just before he left. Per Firefly Aerospace, Blue Ghost performed a successful trans-lunar injection combustion to escape from the Earth’s orbit and formally began to make its way to the moon.
After the trip started, Lander has run out dozens of health inspections to ensure that all the useful loads are functional and make several maneuvers to adjust the trajectory to ensure that it remains on a course.
The first image of the moon by Blue Ghost. The moon is on his side here with the South Pole on the left.
Week 5: Hi Luna
On February 13th a son ghost entered the orbit with the moon After a 4-minute 15-second Burning an engine to insert moon orbitS Firefly’s aerospace space describes it as the most challenging combustion to date, and in the coming days, more adjustments will be made to stabilize the orbit, while changing it from elliptical orbit in circular orbit.
After arriving, land took many pictures In our closest neighborly neighbor. From here, Blue Ghost will spend the next two weeks in the moon orbit, waiting for his chance to land and start performing his various experiments. The expected landing date is March 2.
The stubborn rover is small but powerful
Along with Blue Ghost, NASA starts Stable lunar rover from the Japanese company ISPACE. This is one of the smallest planetary rovers ever designed and won’t look out of place in Rc car Toy shop. Sustainable measures with a height of 10 inches and weighs only 5 pounds.
Tenacious is part of the second resistance mission. The first took place in 2022 with a similar tiny Hakuto-R Lander.
Tenacious will land in the Atlas crater in Mare Frigoris and will connect with Hakuto-R. This will give the data back to the ground.
Tenacious will use its equipment to conduct food experiments, radiation detection, electrolysis of water and collect regolite.
What are the payloads of the mission?
Overall, there are 15 common payloads – the elements of the spacecraft dedicated to the production and transfer of mission data – headed for the moon. Five of them go with stubborn and 10 with a blue ghost.
Blue Ghost useful loads
- Lunar instrumentation for an underground thermal study of speed (Luster) by robotics Honeybee
- Lunar planetavak (Lvp) by robotics Honeybee
- Lunar Retorreflector (the next generation (Nkfr) from the University of Maryland
- Characteristics of adherence to regolite (Rac) from Aerospace Aegis space
- A radiation tolerant computer (RADPC) from the Montana State University
- An electrodynamic dust shield (EDS) from NASA Kennedy’s space center
- Lunar medium heliosphere X -ray image (Lex) by Boston University, NASA Godard Space Center and John Hopkins University
- Lunar magnetothelical sound (Lms) by the Southwestern Research Institute
- Lunar GNSS receiver experimental (Lugre) by the Italian Space Agency and the NASA Godard Space Center
- Stereo camera for lunar carnal surface studies (Scalps) from Nasa Langley Research Center
Useful loads
Watch this: Watch Spacex to catch the Starship booster for a second time
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