CAPE CANAVERAL: A private lunar lander carrying a drill, vacuum and other experiments for Nasa touched down on the moon Sunday, the latest in a string of companies looking to kickstart business on Earth’s celestial neighbour ahead of astronaut missions.
Firefly Aerospace‘s Blue Ghost lander descended from lunar orbit on autopilot, aiming for the slopes of an ancient volcanic dome in an impact basin on the moon’s northeastern edge of the near side.
Confirmation of touchdown came from the company’s Mission Control outside Austin, Texas. “You all stuck the landing,” Will Coogan, the Blue Ghost chief engineer, said during a livestream from the flight operations room. “We’re on the moon.” A few minutes later, Jason Kim, the chief executive of Firefly, declared, “We got some moon dust on our boots.”
A smooth, upright landing makes Firefly – a startup founded a decade ago – the first private outfit to put a spacecraft on the moon without crashing or falling over. Even countries have faltered, with only five claiming success: Russia, the US, China, India and Japan.
Two other companies’ landers are hot on Blue Ghost’s heels, with the next one by Houston-based Intuitive Machines expected to join it on the moon Thursday. A third from Japanese company ispace is still three months from landing.
Launched in mid-Jan from Florida, the 6-foot-6 tall lander carried 10 experiments to the moon for Nasa. The space agency paid $101 million for the delivery, plus $44 million for the science and tech on board. It’s the third mission under Nasa’s commercial lunar delivery programme, intended to ignite a lunar economy of competing private businesses while scouting around before astronauts show up later this decade. The demos should get two weeks of run time, before lunar daytime ends and the lander shuts down.
It carried a vacuum to suck up moon dirt for analysis and a drill to measure temperature as deep as 10 feet below the surface. Also on board: a device for eliminating abrasive lunar dust – a scourge for Nasa’s long-ago Apollo moonwalkers, who got it caked all over their spacesuits and equipment. On its way to the moon, Blue Ghost beamed back exquisite pictures of Earth. It continued to stun once in orbit around the moon, with detailed shots of the surface. At the same time, an on-board receiver acquired signals from the US GPS and European Galileo constellations, an encouraging step forward in navigation for future explorers. The landing set the stage for a fresh crush of visitors angling for a piece of lunar business.
(With inputs from AP and NYT)
