Private lander Blue Ghost successfully lands on moon carrying NASA equipment
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This image captured by Blue Ghost immediately after landing shows Earth in the distance
New York: A private lunar lander has successfully touched down on the northeastern edge of the moon, within the designated 328-foot (100-meter) target zone avoiding hazards like boulders, The Indian Express reported citing news agency AP.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander has pulled off landing with its Mission Control in Texas tracking the process from 225,000 miles (360,000 kilometers) away.
Firefly’s Will Coogan, chief engineer for the lander, reportedly announced ‘You all stuck the landing. We’re on the moon’.
With this huge feat, Firefly Aerospace has become the first private company to place a spacecraft on the moon managing ‘upright and stable’ landing without ‘crashing or toppling over’.
Firefly Aerospace’s success comes even as many national space agencies fail to pull off precise landing.
Only Russia, the US, China, India, and Japan have successfully made lunar landings.
Just 30 minutes after landing, Blue Ghost started sending images including first a selfie, which did not come out well having been obscured by the sun’s glare.
The second image from the lander showed Earth appearing as a blue dot far away against the pitch dark of the space.
Part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative to increase lunar commerce, NASA paid $101 million for the delivery of ten scientific and technological experiments alongside an additional $44 million for the equipment, according to the report.
Blue Ghost lander carried a vacuum for collecting lunar soil samples and a drill to measure temperatures up to 10 feet (3 meters) below the surface.
It is reported that Blue Ghost’s landing will lead to more commercial missions with Houston-based Intuitive Machines planning to land its second lunar lander on Thursday following its first mission tipped over last year.