NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped a view of Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander down on the surface of the moon. It looks like a speck on the lunar landscape.
The moon is gigantic compared to a lunar lander . Imagine flying in orbit above the moon’s surface, looking down at all those craters and the gray landscape and then spotting something the size of a small car.
That’s what NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter did with Firefly Aerospace’sThe spacecraft’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera snapped Blue Ghost at its landing site on the rim of a crater in a region called Mare Crisium.The LRO team shared a before-and-after GIF showing how the lander’s arrival changed the immediate landscape. Blue Ghost Mission 1 is also known as Ghost Riders in the Sky, an amusing reference to a country song about ghostly cattle and cowboys.It’s been an up-and-down time for lunar landers. Blue Ghost represents a triumph. It stuck the landing on March 2 and is now deep into its two-week mission timeline. The Intuitive Machines IM-2 Athena lander tried for a soft touchdown on March 6, but fell over on its side and wasn’t able to complete its science objectives.iOS 18.3.2: Apple’s Surprise iPhone Update Fixes 1 Bug, Adds 1 Frustration Both recent moon missions are connected to NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. CLPS is about NASA science catching rides to the moon with private companies. Blue Ghost’s NASA payloads include atechnology demonstration designed to suck up soil and rocks. These uncrewed robotic moon missions are precursors to NASA’s grand goal of returning astronauts to the moon’s surface through the Artemis program and establishing a long-term human presence there.LRO launched in 2009 on a mission to map the moon’s surface. It’s taken up the lander-spotting hobby and has photographed many missions—both successful landings and crash sites. It captured theBlue Ghost’s operations are timed to cover one lunar day, or about 14 Earth days. The lander has been busy working through its science tasks. It’s been operating NASA’s Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity payload. LISTER is a drill that takes the temperature of the moon’s interior. Firefly released a video of the drill digging into the surface, kicking up rocks and dust in an impressive fashion.LRO’s view from above is like spotting a needle in a haystack. It adds to the documentation of the Ghost Riders in the Sky mission and helps to put the lander’s position in perspective with the surrounding landscape. Exploring the moon is a grand adventure and every lander helps us build a better understanding of the moon, its available resources and how machines can arrive, survive and thrive on the surface.
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