Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost is nearing the end of its two-week mission as the first commercial spacecraft to succeed on the moon. The main purpose following the March 2 touchdown within the Mare Crisium Crater was to deliver 10 NASA equipment designed to collect underground data for the moon. However, the eastern edge of the moon on the near-eastern side provided a great place to see the solar eclipse from a lunar perspective. On Friday, Firefly released it First breathtaking photo The latest Cosmic event, “Diamond Ring Effect,” was shot by Blue Ghost’s onboard camera.
The first image shows the first moment in Eclipse at about 1:30am on March 14th. In addition to taking photos of the eclipse itself, you can also see this event in reflections on the Blue Ghost solar panel array. Lander’s first shot was taken from the top deck and also includes a portion of the X-band antenna (left), the lunar environmental heliosferic x-ray imager (center), and the lunar magnetoteruria sounder mast (right).
The second photo downloaded from Blue Ghost is The The The The The The The This, which brought a glowing strip of sunlight on the moon’s horizon, similar to a diamond ring. Considering the location of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun, this image reminds us of many photos taken during the total solar eclipse on Earth last year. But from its location on Earth here, it was a complete lunar eclipse instead of solar. There, the Shadow of the Earth created the “Blood Moon” event. According to Firefly, this was the first time a commercial company had been actively active on the moon during a solar eclipse. Blue Ghost relies primarily on solar power, so I took a second photo while operating the battery reserves.
Mission control engineers need to warm up the X-band antenna over time and wait a little longer before downlinking more images after experiencing the extreme temperatures that arise from around two hours of total. For reference, temperatures regularly drop to -208 degrees Fahrenheit on moon nights. Although not the official part of the mission, Firefly Mission Engineers also plans to analyze data collected from NASA equipment during the approximately five-hour solar eclipse. In doing so, they hope to learn more about how solar eclipses affect the lunar environment.
Blue Ghost will permanently power the Blue Ghost a few hours after its moonlight on March 16th, but at least one photo shoot is still scheduled. The engineer is the first another person in the historic Lander and plans to downlink images from the upcoming moonlit sunsets.
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