The moon will be a busy place this year. There are three robotic spacecraft during the time at the moment they aim to place on the surface of the moon.
The first of those to arrive – the Blue Ghost Lunar Lander, built by Texas Firefly Aerospace – will try to land early on Sunday.
When is the landing and how can I watch it?
The landing is scheduled for 3:45 am East Time on March 2. Firefly will start a live landing coverage at 2:20 am from the YouTube channel.
What is the destination of Blue Ghost?
This mission is directed to Mare Crisium, a flat plans formed by lava filled and hardened into a 345 -mile width carved by an ancient asteroid impact. Mare Crisium is located in the northeast quarter of the nearby side of the moon.
What does Blue Ghost get to the moon?
Lander carries a variety of scientific and experimental beneficial loads to the lunar surface, including 10 for NASA. These include a drill to measure the heat flow from the inside of the moon on the surface, an electrodynamic dust shield to clean the glass and radiator surfaces and a X -ray camera.
This load is part of the Lunar Lunar Merchant Office or CLPS, which aims to place NASA’s equipment on the moon at a cheaper price than if NASA has created its own lunar Lander. The organization will pay $ 101.5 million, although the 10 beneficial loads reach the lunar surface and a little less if the shipment does not fully succeed.
Blue Ghost is the third CLPS mission to start the moon. The first, in 2024, from Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic, failed after the start. The second, with Houston’s intuitive machines last year, reached the moon, but was overthrown.
Why does landing happen at such an early time?
His physics to reach a particular place in the solar system at a certain time does not always fit when people are awake to watch. The Blue Ghost Lander spacecraft takes its power from solar panels, so the mission aims to land shortly after the dawn of a new lunar day. And to reach Mare Crisium on March 2, the landing time turns out to be 3:45 am
“This is just when this happens,” said Ray Allensworth, the Blue Ghost program manager in Firefly.
The mission is to take about 14 days of Earth to the lunar sunset.
How has the mission go so far?
Blue Ghost has executed almost perfectly. For the first 25 days, he turned the land as the company activated and controlled the spacecraft systems. He then shot his engine on a four -day trip to the moon, entering the orbit on February 13.
Some minor malfunctions have come along, but there are no significant malfunctions. Mostly, shipping auditors made adjustments as they learned how the spacecraft behaved in the space environment.
“Thermal alarms can erase,” said Allensworth. “Things get a little hotter than planned, a little colder than planned in the vehicle. Want to see this data and see is really okay.”
What happened to the other lunar Lander that started with Blue Ghost?
In the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that started Blue Ghost in orbit was durability, a lunar Lander built by Japan’s ispace. The two missions are separate, but Ispace, looking for a cheaper stroll through space, had asked Spacex for a rideshare, that is, striking a stroll as a secondary payload. This turned out to be Blue Ghost Launch.
Although the durability started at the same time with the Blue Ghost, it takes a longer, more efficient route to the moon and is expected to enter the moon orbiting the moon in early May.
