45 days until the moon - Firefly Aerospace launch a success
CAPE CANVERAL, FL (KXAN) - Blue Ghost One is now orbiting Earth. Launching at 1:11 a.m. EST, a SpaceX rocket carried the Cedar Park-built lunar lander into space. Its eventual destination: the moon.
The 45-day journey from the Earth to the Moon carries with it multiple scientific instruments as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
The lunar lander will spend 25 days in orbit around the Earth. Each orbit will get longer until it can then get close enough to the moon to pivot to an orbit around it. Blue Ghost will spend four days in transit to the moon and then 16 days in actual orbit.
During this time, several experiments will take place. One will test GPS signals closer to the moon to see if we can use Earth's satellites on the lunar surface. The other will test a computer's ability to withstand radiation.
Blue Ghost One is scheduled to land on the Moon on March 2. After that, it will have two Earth weeks to conduct a variety of experiments as part of CLPS. These include drilling into the surface of the moon and taking X-ray images of the Earth.
As dusk settles over the Moon and temperatures plummet hundreds of degrees, Blue Ghost will photograph a lunar sunset.
Attempt two for ispace
A second lunar lander was also carried aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. This lander, built by Japanese company ispace, is the second attempt by the company to land on the moon. Named Resilience, this lander will take 3-5 months to reach the moon.
“This is the first decade that we’re seeing a commercial enterprise and a commercial push out to the moon, and really, a US return to the moon in general,” said Firefly Deputy Program Manager Kevin Scholtes.
The mission completes a half-decade of work by the team. “I don’t think human beings are just naturally capable of appreciating the full emotional spectrum of that. You just kind of have to live through it,” Scholtes said.