Blue Ghost Mission

#1
Yazata Offline
Happening now. A SpaceX Falcon 9 is launching not one, but two small lunar landers!

SpaceX stream is here:

https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1djGXrNyMPPxZ

1. Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost lander

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_Ae...Blue_Ghost

2. Japan's ISpace Hakuto-R mission 2 lander

This is ISpace's second attempt to land their Hakuto-R lander on the Moon. The first failed, see the thread below

https://www.scivillage.com/thread-13302.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuto-R_Mission_2

nsNS

Appeared to be a good Falcon 9 launch - booster landed fine.

Now the landers will slowly raise their orbits until they are captured by the Moon's gravity
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
#7
C C Offline
Not bad. Two successful US private company landers almost a year apart. No crashes or upside down mishaps.
Reply
#8
Yazata Offline
(Mar 5, 2025 02:53 AM)C C Wrote: Not bad. Two successful US private company landers almost a year apart. No crashes or upside down mishaps.

There's another of the NASA CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload System) landers up there right now preparing to land at the Moon's south pole: Intuitive Machines IM-2 Athena lander. (Intuitive Machines impressed NASA by landing their IM-1 lander last year.)

This one launched on February 27 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 and hopes to land on Thursday March 6 at 12:32 PM EST (9:32 AM PST, 17:32 UTC) NASA will live stream it.

One of the features of this one is a little Intuitive Machines built hopper powered by hydrazine jets that hopes to carry cameras and a spectrometer as it leaps into nearby craters to look for water ice. It's said to have a range of 25km, so it should be able to check out multiple craters. (The Moon only has 1/6g, so hopping is practical.) They hope that it spots some lava tubes while it is at it.

There's also a little rover from the separate company Lunar Outpost called MAPP (Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform) This was developed under a contract from NASA for just $1! The company basically gets a chance to get its rover to the Moon, along with a chance to impress NASA and maybe win future contracts. It carries an advanced camera developed by MIT to look at rocks, regolith and (hopefully) ice. MAPP in turn will release a micro-rover the size of a match box from MIT that carries a thermal sensor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IM-2

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-s...n-landing/
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Boeing Starliner Orbital Demonstration Mission Yazata 60 9,347 Mar 19, 2025 04:34 AM
Last Post: Yazata
  What Blue Origin is Up To Yazata 75 10,149 Feb 14, 2025 03:57 AM
Last Post: Yazata
  NASA's Dragonfly Mission Yazata 0 543 Nov 25, 2024 11:13 PM
Last Post: Yazata
  Could Blue Origin actually beat SpaceX to the Moon? + Blue Origin's human spacecraft C C 0 480 Mar 6, 2024 05:53 PM
Last Post: C C
  Axiom-1 Mission Yazata 18 2,058 Feb 9, 2024 10:20 PM
Last Post: Yazata
  SpaceX Mars mission vision = Elon's grand folly Kornee 5 884 Jan 28, 2023 05:55 AM
Last Post: Kornee
  NASA's DART mission Magical Realist 3 622 Sep 27, 2022 02:30 AM
Last Post: Yazata



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)