Blue Ghost successfully starts lunar surface mission while IM-2 lands sideways

Date:
Fri, 07 Mar 2025 20:50:49 +0000

Description:
NASAs Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program is now seeing more results from the work The post Blue Ghost successfully starts lunar surface mission while IM-2 lands sideways appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .

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NASAs Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program is now seeing more results from the work done by providers to fulfill its task orders in the
past few years, though not without challenges. Two robotic lunar landers from different US commercial providers landed on the lunar surface, with one successfully landing upright and starting its mission, and the other communicating from the surface but dealing with an off-nominal landing.

Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines, two of the companies that were eligible for CLPS task orders, are now controlling landers at different sectors of the Moon over 3,000 km apart. The landers touched down within days of each other, while a third lunar lander from Japan is working to reach the Moon on a fuel-efficient low-energy trajectory.



Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1

Fireflys Blue Ghost Mission 1 Ghost Riders In the Sky and ispaces HAKUTO-R M2 Resilience launched together aboard the same Falcon 9 in January of this
year. While Resilience is currently tracking a June 5 landing at the Mare Frigoris region of the Moon, Blue Ghost is on the surface at Mare Crisium
(Sea of Crises) conducting activities with 10 payloads.

Blue Ghost arrived in lunar orbit on Feb. 13 after conducting a four-minute, 15-second burn with its 1,000 newton thrust main engine and eight Spectre reaction control system (RCS) thrusters providing a total of 1,600 newtons of thrust. The spacecraft spent the next 16 days adjusting its orbital path, ending up in a 100 km altitude circular orbit, gathering some data with its science payloads, and sending back spectacular pictures from lunar orbit.
Blue Ghost Mission 1 is seen orbiting the Moon. (Credit: Firefly Aerospace)

The scheduled landing day arrived during the early hours of March 2, and Blue Ghost started the landing procedure with a descent orbit insertion (DOI) burn 63 minutes before the scheduled touchdown near Mons Latreille, a volcanic feature in Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises). Mare Crisium is a circular sea a basin created by an asteroid impact surfaced three billion years ago with molten basaltic lava on the northeast quadrant of the near side of the lunar surface as viewed from Earths Northern Hemisphere.

Blue Ghost conducted the DOI on the far side of the Moon, which caused a communications blackout with Earth. The spacecraft was on the correct flight path when communications with Blue Ghost resumed around 20 minutes after the burn, and the lander coasted for around 30 minutes until it reached an altitude of roughly 20 km over the lunar surface.

The Powered Descent Initiation (PDI) burn was conducted at that point. After the successful nine-minute PDI burn using all of the spacecrafts engines, the main engine shut down and the rest of the descent was slowed using the eight Spectre thrusters. Blue Ghosts orbital velocity slowed from 1,700 meters per second to 40 m/s, then all the way down to 1 m/s for the touchdown. The first picture Blue Ghost Mission 1 sent back showed that it had landed
successfully. (Credit: Firefly Aerospace)

Three of Blue Ghosts four landing leg footpad sensors indicated a touchdown
on the surface, and a successful soft landing on the Moon was confirmed at
the Firefly mission control center in Austin, Texas. The exact landing site, several kilometers from Mons Latreille, was chosen by the spacecrafts autonomous navigation system using a pair of cameras to pinpoint a site free of hazards. With this landing, Blue Ghost Mission 1 became the second spacecraft to land successfully in Mare Crisium, following the Soviet Luna 24 robotic sample return mission in 1976.

The spacecraft later sent a picture looking down at the surface as well as a dramatic picture showing its shadow on the Mare Crisium landing site at
18.562 degrees North and 61.810 degrees East. Blue Ghost deployed its X-band antenna, enabling mission controllers to downlink high-resolution video from the lunar surface. View from the Blue Ghost Mission 1 landers top deck. (Credit: Firefly Aerospace)

There have already been early returns from NASA experiments aboard Blue Ghost Mission 1. The Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS), designed to use electrical forces to remove lunar dust from things like glass and thermal radiator surfaces, already fulfilled most of its objectives after only three days on the lunar surface. The Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) acquired and tracked global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals on the lunar
surface for the first time ever, capturing signals approximately 362,102 km from Earth.

The Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) captured images during the landers descent and touchdown on the surface, which are being analyzed. The Lunar PlanetVac (LPV) was deployed by Blue Ghosts Surface
Access Arm onto the surface and started sampling lunar regolith material. LPV is designed to collect and transfer lunar soil without relying on gravity.

While the EDS, LuGRE, SCALPSS, and LPV have gotten early attention, Blue
Ghost carries more experiments. The Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) is designed to study the interaction of solar wind and the Earths magnetic field, and LEXI was checked out in lunar orbit along with LuGRE.

The Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS), the Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER), Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR), Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC), and the Radiation Tolerant Computer (RadPC) are also on board. The LMS will investigate the Moons mantle, while LISTER will drill two to three meters below the surface to measure interior heat flow. The Lunar PlanetVac instrument is shown after its deployment at the end of Blue Ghosts surface access arm. (Credit: Firefly Aerospace)

The NGLR is a passive experiment that will be used to measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon with sub-millimeter accuracy. The RAC will expose different materials and coatings to lunar dust to measure their
ability to shed or repel this razor-sharp dust, which can cause serious
issues for spacecraft. Finally, the RadPC measures a computers ability to recover from radiation-caused faults in the lunar and deep space
environments.

As of Thursday, March 6, eight of the 10 payloads on board the EDS, LuGRE, SCALPSS, LPV, LISTER, NGLR, RAC, and RadPC have met their mission
objectives. The payloads still have additional opportunities to gather data over the next 10 days.

The Blue Ghost lander has already imaged a lunar sunrise at Mare Crisium. On March 14, the Earth will totally eclipse the Sun from the Moons vantage point and the spacecraft will be in position to observe the eclipse if it is still operational. Blue Ghost is also scheduled to image the lunar sunset on March 16. The lunar sunrise seen at Mare Crisium by Blue Ghost Flight 1. (Credit: Firefly Aerospace)

Blue Ghost Mission 1 is expected to operate during one lunar day 14 Earth days and several hours during the lunar night before the spacecraft succumbs to the extreme nighttime cold temperatures found on the Moon. Fireflys successful first-ever landing of Blue Ghost bodes well for Blue Ghost Mission 2 and its effort to land on the lunar far side, currently scheduled for 2026.

Intuitive Machines IM-2

Intuitive Machines is conducting the second flight of its NOVA-C robotic
lunar lander, which is named Athena after the Greek goddess of wisdom. Athena launched successfully atop a Falcon 9 on Feb. 26 and reached lunar orbit on March 3, a day after Blue Ghost Mission 1s landing.

Athena orbited the Moon 39 times to wait for sufficient solar power capability at its Mons Mouton landing site, 100 km from the lunar South Pole and the southernmost site on the lunar surface to be targeted for a landing. During Athena s orbital phase, the landers navigational cameras were calibrated and the spacecraft returned spectacular images from lunar orbit. The Earth and the Moon seen from lunar orbit by the IM-2 NOVA-C Athena
lander. (Credit: Intuitive Machines)

Athena s landing phase started in the early hours of Thursday, March 6 when the lander completed its descent orbit insertion maneuver and controllers prepared the spacecraft for landing. The powered descent initiation (PDI)
burn followed at an altitude of 13 km above the Moon, some 14 minutes and 30 seconds before the scheduled 17:32 UTC landing.

The PDI burn lasted for 11 minutes before a pitch-over maneuver successfully brought the lander near the landing site. Meanwhile, Athena took pictures autonomously as part of its navigation to select a landing site free of hazards. There was a loss of signal on one radio system around the time of pitch over.

Although this was expected, there was conflicting data on whether the spacecraft landed vertically. Moreover, the telemetry falsely suggested that the main engine was still on after landing when it was not active. Instead of applause and confirmation of an upright landing, controllers worked to assess the status of the spacecraft after the time had come for the landing. Intuitive Machines IM-2 Athena seen during landing operations on Thursday, March 6, 2025. (Credit: NASA/Intuitive Machines)

Mission controllers in Houston were able to communicate with Athena on the lunar surface while they were working to figure out the orientation of the lander after its touchdown. The spacecraft was generating power although initially not enough according to Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus. As a result, controllers turned off some systems to try to get Athena into a power-positive state. See Also Blue Ghost Mission 1 updates IM-2 mission updates Space science section Click here to join L2

The lander later was found to be charging its batteries, and controllers were able to continue to communicate with the spacecraft. As of 21:00 UTC on March 6, there was no definitive word on the exact orientation of the lander,
though Altemus stated that the spacecraft did not appear to be in a correct orientation.

Despite the apparent off-nominal position of Athena , Altemus opened the post-landing press conference on a positive note. Any time that you ship a spacecraft to Florida for flight and end up a week later operating on the Moon, I declare that a success, said Altemus. Intuitive Machines chief growth officer Dr. Tim Crain noted improvements in the NOVA-Cs performance from the first flight to the second one as well as being able to make 65 changes
before this flight.

The missions fate became clear the next day when an image downlinked from the lander confirmed that it was on its side, 250 m from its target landing location. Athena s orientation meant that its solar panels did not catch enough sunlight to recharge the batteries, which are now depleted. As a result, Intuitive Machines declared the mission completed. Intuitive Machines IM-2 Athena after landing on its side in the Mons Mouton region. (Credit: Intuitive Machines)

Intuitive Machines was still able to communicate with Athena on the lunar surface. During this period, teams accelerated mission milestones and
operated some of the landers payloads.

There are 11 payloads aboard Athena , with the headline NASA payload being
the PRIME-1 suite of two instruments a drill and a mass spectrometer. The MAPP rover and its associated AstroAnt mini-rover were planned to move around on the lunar surface and test the Nokia 4G/LTE-based Lunar Surface Communication System. Lunar Outpost noted indications that MAPP was alive and transmitting from the lunar surface in a post from the social media app X.

The Micro Nova Hopper GRACE, with two instruments, was another payload expected to move around the lunar surface, along with the Japanese Yaoki rover. Athena also carried a laser retroreflector array and a data center payload, the first data center off Earth.

One common factor during the IM-1 and IM-2 landings involved issues with the laser rangefinder on the NOVA-C lander. While the rangefinder was not able to function during IM-1, it functioned during IM-2 but there was noise in the rangefinders data. NOVA-Cs next mission, IM-3, is set to land in a mid-latitude area on the Moon sometime in 2026. Intuitive Machine is
currently unable to tell how that mission will be affected by the
developments of the IM-2 landing. The IM-2 Athena lander seen before launch processing activities. (Credit: Intuitive Machines)

Four robotic lunar landings by the US commercial space sector have been attempted in the last 14 months, with the Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 Ghost Riders In the Sky being the first US lander to complete a fully successful vertical landing on the lunar surface since December 1972. The Astrobotic Peregrine Mission One failed after issues during its post-launch commissioning, while Intuitive Machines IM-1 Odysseus and IM-2 Athena landed in the lunar south polar region but not in their planned surface orientation.

NASA Science Mission Directorate Associate Administrator Dr. Nicola Fox noted that NASA was not just about lessons learned, but about lessons applied, and that lessons from these missions will no doubt assist future commercial lunar landings. Additional commercial lunar missions are planned for the next few years, with Astrobotic Griffin Mission One planned for no earlier than December 2025, while Blue Ghost Mission 2 and IM-3 are currently planned for next year.

( Lead image: Blue Ghost Mission 1s shadow is seen here after landing in Mare Crisium. The Earth is seen above the lunar horizon. Credit: Firefly
Aerospace)



The post Blue Ghost successfully starts lunar surface mission while IM-2
lands sideways appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .



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Link to news story: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2025/03/blue-ghost-im-2-landings/


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