A robotic spacecraft from an American startup that was gently placed on the lava plain on the nearby side of the moon early Sunday morning.
Blue Ghost Lander, built by Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas, fell at 3:34 am Each time.
“I have all suspended the decline,” said Will Kogan, chief engineer, chief engineer in operations. “We are on the surface of the moon.”
After a few minutes, Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly, announced, with pride, “We got some moon dust on our shoes.”
Within about half an hour, the spacecraft sent its first image on the moon.
It was a remarkable success for the company, as it achieved what many did.
Among the countries, companies and institutions that tried in the twenty -first century to prohibit calmly on the surface of the moon, only China can claim full success in the first attempt. Others, including India, Russia, Israeli non -profit organizations, and a Japanese company, were all shattered by new pits on the moon.
Last year, two from Landers – one of them sent Jaxa, the Japanese Space Agency, and the other by Houston’s intuitive machines – to decline successfully and continued to work and communicate with the Earth. But both overthrew, which limits what the spacecraft can accomplish on the moon.
The intuitive machines were the first private company to descend on the surface of the moon successfully. Al -Yarraa is now the second. Both are part of NASA’s efforts to harness the private institution to reduce the cost of taking scientific and technological loads to the moon. For this task, NASA pays $ 101.5 million.
“What Firefly showed today, I think they have made it easy, but it’s very difficult,” Joel Kerns, Deputy Director of Exploration in the NASA Directorate of Science Mission, said at a press conference after the landing.
Dr. Kerns said that success provides “evidence of existence” that NASA’s approach to financing such tasks can succeed.
Since its launch from the Kennedy Space Center in NASA in Florida on January 15, the Blue Ghost spacecraft had almost a defect.
“We had no big abnormal cases, which is great,” said Ray Alinsworth, director of the Blue Ghost program in Firefly, during Livestream.
About an hour before the landing, the spacecraft carried out a pre -programmed order to launch its main engine for 19 seconds in order to push itself from 62 miles on a path down to the surface.
At that moment, the spacecraft was behind the moon and outside the communications. No one in the aviation operations room knew how the spacecraft was doing until it appeared about 20 minutes later.
As appeared from the distant lunar side, all systems were working as expected, and Blue Ghost was supposed to be.
About 11 minutes before landing, Lander, which travels at an altitude of 3800 miles per hour, released its main engine to slow down. During the last minutes of the proportions, it was pivotal in my head direction, avoiding risks and starting at the pace of slow walking.
“Oh my God, we did it!” Mrs. Alinsworth shouted after that. “It is amazing. My heart beats very quickly.”
Located in Mare Crisium, the landing site is located, and it is a flat plain consisting of volcanic lava that fills and hardens inside a hole at the level of 345 miles carved by the effect of the old asteroid. Mare Crisium is located in the northeastern quarter of the nearby side of the moon.
The task is to last about 14 days from Earth until the sunset.
Lander holds 10 tools for NASA as part of the proxy lunar loader services program, or CLPS. Many of them focus on lunar dust, which is often angular, sticky and sharp – a curse of machines and a possible health problem for future astronauts.
“We will consider how to adhere to different materials,” said Maria Banks, the project scientist of NASA’s CLPS program. “We take the sterio photography and we go to the surface to see how the missile column affects the lunar recole. We will test the use of electromagnetism to relieve the accumulation or prevention of dust.”
The reception device on the spacecraft successfully follows global navigation signals while they are in the orbit of the moon. This indicates that the American GPS and European Galileo satellite satellites can also help spacecraft to find the moon.
“By doing this already in Orbit Lunar Orbit and Lunar Surface, we open a completely new way for us to move in the future,” James Miller, NASA, said during the pre -press conference.
The X -ray telescope will look at Earth to capture a global vision of the interactions between the magnetic field of the Earth and the charged particles of the solar wind.
“We take the first global image of the magnetic field to understand how it moves as a time function in response to the sun,” said Brian Walsh, Engineering Professor at Boston University, who is the main investigator of the tool.
Lander also holds designed exercises to nine feet in lunar soil and measure the heat flow from the interior of the moon. Another experience is a computer designed to recover from errors caused by space radiation.
The landing shed light on the success of a company that was sometimes more involved in the court hall and political drama than the firing of the missiles and Moon Landers.
The original version of the company was established, Firefly Space Systems, in 2014. The CEO was Thomas Markusic, an airspace who was previously working for three missile companies owned by billion Virgin Galactic.
Virgin Galactic filed a lawsuit against Al -Yaure, claiming that Mr. Marcosick stole his commercial secrets in the founding of Al -Yaraaa. In 2016, a main European investor fell, and Firefly put all its employees on the leave while drying his money.
A technical businessman, Max Polyakov, came to the rescue, and the Firefly Corne space systems were re -circulated as a nurturing in Firefly Aerospace. However, in 2022, the United States government was forced, noting the concerns of national security, Dr. Polakov, born in Ukraine, to sell his share of Al -Yaraaa.
But Firefly has also won some major contracts, including the task placed on the surface of the moon on Sunday.
In the past few years, Firefly has successfully launched the alpha small missile several times, including one task of the U.S. space power, which has proven that the ability to prepare and launch a load in a short notice. Firefly also develops a larger missile currently known as the medium launch vehicle, and a series of spacecraft known as ELLETRA that can perform various tasks in orbit.
Firefly also won two other CLPS missions.
The second, scheduled for next year, is the landing on the other side of the moon. The third, to be held in 2028, is an investigation into Gruithisen domes, an unusual volcanic area on the near side of the moon.
“As long as we are implementing, we will continue to get the bolder and greater,” Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly, said in an interview last week.
The moon will remain a crowded place. Another mission CLPS is only days. The second moon drop in the intuitive machines, Athens, is scheduled to land on Thursday near the southern pole of the moon.
After another spacecraft is also on the way. On the same Spacex Falcon 9 missile that launched the Blue Ghost to Orbit is flexibility, the moon’s emotion of Japan.
Although flexibility left the Earth at the same time as Blue Ghost, it takes a longer and more efficient way to fuel consumption to the moon, and it is expected to enter orbit around the moon in early May.