{"id":9735,"date":"2025-03-01T20:55:39","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T20:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.itshrt.com\/worldnews\/firefly-aerospaces-blue-ghost-moon-lander-on-course-for-descent-to-touchdown-sunday\/"},"modified":"2025-03-01T20:55:39","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T20:55:39","slug":"firefly-aerospaces-blue-ghost-moon-lander-on-course-for-descent-to-touchdown-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.itshrt.com\/worldnews\/firefly-aerospaces-blue-ghost-moon-lander-on-course-for-descent-to-touchdown-sunday\/","title":{"rendered":"Firefly Aerospace&#8217;s Blue Ghost moon lander on course for descent to touchdown Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- ItShrt World News -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1882483372\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p>Firefly Aerospace&#8217;s Blue Ghost lander closed in on the moon Saturday, on course for a nail-biting automated descent to touchdown early Sunday, the first of three private-sector robotic moon landers to reach its target after launches earlier this year.<\/p>\n<p>The Blue Ghost lunar lander spent a month orbiting Earth after launch <span class=\"link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/lunar-lander-athena-launch-ice-search-on-moon\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">atop a Falcon 9 rocket in January<\/a><\/span>, giving Firefly flight controllers in Austin, Texas, plenty of time to activate and test its systems and science payloads before heading to the moon.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"embed embed--type-image is-image embed--float-none embed--size-medium\"><span class=\"img embed__content\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" alt=\"030125-landing.jpg \" height=\"349\" width=\"620\" class=\" lazyload\" srcset=\"https:\/\/assets3.cbsnewsstatic.com\/hub\/i\/r\/2025\/03\/01\/f2d8f69e-db4d-4e72-965a-db757e9a7b45\/thumbnail\/620x349\/12b4d6a18bc59ae98b3dfe276517459a\/030125-landing.jpg?v=8de240724d7f6d8b5f54f62bb158c012 1x, https:\/\/assets2.cbsnewsstatic.com\/hub\/i\/r\/2025\/03\/01\/f2d8f69e-db4d-4e72-965a-db757e9a7b45\/thumbnail\/1240x698\/95f12f714556b812dd88244438278ff3\/030125-landing.jpg?v=8de240724d7f6d8b5f54f62bb158c012 2x\"\/><\/span><figcaption class=\"embed__caption-container\"><span class=\"embed__caption\">An artist&#8217;s impression of the Blue Ghost lander on the surface of the moon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                  <span class=\"embed__credit\"><\/p>\n<p>                Firefly Aerospace<\/p>\n<p>                          <\/span><br \/>\n              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Once there, the spacecraft spent 16 days in lunar orbit refining its trajectory and beaming back spectacular views of Earth from 240,000 miles away.<\/p>\n<p>Now, after multiple thruster firings to reach the planned descent orbit, the 6.6-foot-tall spacecraft is poised for a rocket-powered drop to the surface. Touchdown at Mare Crisium \u2014 the Sea of Crisis \u2014 is expected around 3:34 a.m. EST, near an ancient volcanic feature called Mons Latreille.<\/p>\n<p>The solar-powered lander is expected to operate for a full lunar &#8220;day,&#8221; or 14 Earth days. If all goes well, it may continue operating on battery power for a few hours into the dark lunar night before finally going silent.<\/p>\n<p>Firefly CEO Jason Kim said the Blue Ghost is the latest example of commercial technology provided by the private sector &#8220;really bringing down the cost and affordability of (space) systems.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Once in a blue-moon long time ago, these type of lunar landers took billions of dollars and countries behind (them) to land on the moon,&#8221; he said in a pre-launch interview with CBS News.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is Firefly Aerospace that&#8217;s gonna land on the moon at fractions of the cost on a fixed-price contract, and doing it with the latest commercial technology,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Just like Simone Biles stuck the landing in the Olympics, we&#8217;re gonna do the same thing for the state of Texas, for America and for the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>NASA paid Firefly Aerospace $101 million to carry 10 agency-sponsored  science instruments, built at a cost of $44 million, to the moon as  part of the agency&#8217;s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS)  initiative.<\/p>\n<p>The CLPS program is aimed at encouraging private  industry to launch agency payloads to the moon to collect needed science  and engineering data before Artemis astronauts begin work on the  surface near the lunar south pole later this decade.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"embed embed--type-image is-image embed--float-none embed--size-medium\"><span class=\"img embed__content\"><img alt=\"030125-orbit.jpg \" height=\"349\" width=\"620\" class=\" lazyload\" srcset=\"https:\/\/assets2.cbsnewsstatic.com\/hub\/i\/r\/2025\/03\/01\/ece627a9-8431-4185-8cd2-6a88006f6d62\/thumbnail\/620x349\/1d5b56d2aa166a0ff3f166647e5e4a36\/030125-orbit.jpg?v=8de240724d7f6d8b5f54f62bb158c012 1x, https:\/\/assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com\/hub\/i\/r\/2025\/03\/01\/ece627a9-8431-4185-8cd2-6a88006f6d62\/thumbnail\/1240x698\/e08843309c7e135e6fe0cff42b439d22\/030125-orbit.jpg?v=8de240724d7f6d8b5f54f62bb158c012 2x\"\/><\/span><figcaption class=\"embed__caption-container\"><span class=\"embed__caption\">On-board cameras have captured spectacular views of the moon&#8217;s cratered surface from orbit while awaiting descent to touchdown.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                  <span class=\"embed__credit\"><\/p>\n<p>                Firefly Aerospace<\/p>\n<p>                          <\/span><br \/>\n              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&#8220;One of these days, we&#8217;re going to get there in terms of the commercial aspects of the moon,&#8221; Kim said. &#8220;There&#8217;s going to be a lot of business plans that are going to be self-sustaining and growing. It&#8217;s a great location to frequently go and test out new missions to sustain life in space, and it&#8217;s a stepping stone for Mars as well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sharing a ride to space with Blue Ghost aboard the same Falcon 9 rocket was another moon lander, a spacecraft called &#8220;Resilience&#8221; that was built by Tokyo-based ispace. The company sent another lander to the moon last year, but it crashed to the surface after running out of fuel due to a software glitch.<\/p>\n<p>For ispace&#8217;s second attempt, the appropriately-named Resilience took a long, low-energy route to the moon and is expected to make its landing attempt in May.<\/p>\n<p>Yet another lunar lander, this one built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines and known as Athena, <span class=\"link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/lunar-lander-athena-launch-ice-search-on-moon\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">was launched last Wednesday<\/a><\/span> by another Falcon 9 and is expected to touch down on the moon March 6.<\/p>\n<p>Athena also was funded in large part by NASA&#8217;s CLPS program, which agreed to pay the company $62.5 million to carry a sophisticated drill and mass spectrometer to the moon.<\/p>\n<p>NASA awarded a $15 million technology &#8220;tipping point&#8221; contract to Nokia to test cellular communications on the moon and another $41 million to Intuitive Machines for a rocket-powered &#8220;hopper&#8221; that will jump into a permanently shadowed crater in search of ice deposits.<\/p>\n<p>Firefly&#8217;s lander is carrying 10 instruments, including cameras, a drill to bore into the surface below the spacecraft, a radiation-tolerant computer, equipment that will attempt to pull in GPS navigation signals from Earth, an experiment to learn more about managing lunar dust and one to monitor the dispersal of dust kicked up by the lander&#8217;s rocket engines.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;One of the core purposes of the CLPS program with NASA is to be a precursor to Artemis, which is obviously sending humans back to the moon,&#8221; said Ray Allensworth, Firefly&#8217;s spacecraft program director.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So our payloads are collecting data so we can figure out what does it feel like to be on the lunar surface, to operate on the lunar surface? So all that data will inform when we actually return humans to the moon.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>    <!-- data-recirc-source=\"chartbeat\" --><\/p>\n<aside class=\"component list recirculation component--type-recirculation component--type-recirculation-collection\">\n<p>                  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/feature\/space-astronomy\/?intcid=CNI-00-10aaa3a\" class=\"component__view-more component__view-more--sm\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\"><br \/>\n            More<br \/>\n            <svg viewbox=\"0 0 32 32\" class=\"icon__caret-right\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><use xlink:href=\"#icon-caret-down\"\/><\/svg><\/a><br \/>\n                    <\/aside>\n<p><!-- tags --><\/p>\n<div class=\"content-author\">\n      <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/team\/william-harwood\/\" class=\"content-author__name\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">William Harwood<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"content-author__bio\">\n<div class=\"content-author__full-information\">\n<p class=\"content-author__text\">Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- ItShrt World News -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1882483372\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/blue-ghost-moon-landing-touchdown\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Firefly Aerospace&#8217;s Blue Ghost lander closed in on the moon Saturday, on course for a nail-biting automated descent to touchdown<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[3212,833,832],"class_list":["post-9735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space","tag-artemis-program","tag-nasa","tag-space"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Firefly Aerospace&#039;s Blue Ghost moon lander on course for descent to touchdown Sunday - World News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Blue Ghost lunar lander privately developed by Firefly Aerospace is carrying a suite of sophisticated instruments to the moon for NASA.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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