Blue Ghost Mission

[Yazata]

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

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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

[Yazata]

Firefly's Blue Ghost lander conducted a burn on Thursday to insert it into orbit around the Moon. It is currently conducting maneuvers to circularize its elliptical orbit.

Landing on the Moon is planned for 3:45 AM (EST) on Sunday March 2.

https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2025/02/1...n-complete

[Image: GjxAPckWgAAJMbA?format=jpg&name=4096x4096]

[Image: GjxAGKNXoAAWxfz?format=jpg&name=medium]

nsNS

[Yazata]

Blue Ghost will attempt its landing this evening.

Link to NASA stream here:

https://x.com/NASA/status/1896098281828085925

Firefly's livestream will start at 11:20 PM PST, 2:20 AM EST

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ChEuA1AUJAY

[Yazata]

Successful Moon landing!

Blue Ghost is on the Moon!

Buzz Aldrin watching:

https://x.com/TheRealBuzz/status/1896123720198180870

[Yazata]

Blue Ghost photo of sunrise on the Moon

[Image: GlJNN6dWIAAOFdP?format=jpg&name=small]

[Yazata]

Firefly has posted extraordinary video downloaded by Blue Ghost from during its successful lunar landing:

This has to be the best lunar landing video ever recorded by anyone, ever!

https://x.com/Firefly_Space/status/1896980472304910772

[C C]

Not bad. Two successful US private company landers almost a year apart. No crashes or upside down mishaps.

[Yazata]

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/