Blue Ghost Lunar Lander by Firefly from Texas

tahanson43206 · 2025-02-02 07:45:57

A relative sent the link below:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/01/science/ … id=ios_app

The report includes a number of images and a video, along with text.

The report is followed by a number of comments, some of which seems worth reading.

The flight is intended to attempt a landing.

This topic is available for NewMars members who might run across links to add to the record of this flight.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2025-02-02 07:46:34

This post is reserved for an index to posts that may be contributed by NewMars members over time.

Index:
Void: Photo of shadow after landing on the Moon
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 97#p230097

Post# 9: GW Johnson: Snipped from AIAA "Daily Launch" Flat Lander success
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 35#p230435

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2025-02-24 18:31:56

Blue Ghost is a few days from a landing attempt on March 2nd.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/24/science/ … id=ios_app

The article at the link above includes images taken by Blue Ghost, and a short video of the Moon as the space craft rotates.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2025-03-02 07:56:02

Apparently Blue Ghost landed...

Private lunar lander Blue Ghost aces moon touchdown with a special delivery for NASA
Story by MARCIA DUNN
• 5h • 4 min read

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo … ticle_link

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A private lunar lander carrying a drill, vacuum and other experiments for NASA touched down on the moon Sunday, the latest in a string of companies looking to kickstart business on Earth's celestial neighbor ahead of astronaut missions.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander descended from lunar orbit on autopilot, aiming for the slopes of an ancient volcanic dome in an impact basin on the moon’s northeastern edge of the near side.
Confirmation of successful touchdown came from the company's Mission Control outside Austin, Texas, following the action some 225,000 miles (360,000 kilometers) away.

(th)

Void · 2025-03-02 11:47:49

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/firef … 7a05&ei=12 Image Quote: AA1A5ktT.img?w=534&h=401&m=6
Quote:

A dramatic photo beamed back from a camera on the Blue Ghost lander shows the spacecraft's shadow on the moon shortly after touchdown with Earth suspended in space above the lunar horizon. / Credit: FIrefly Aerospace

That is a nice thing to see.

Ending Pending

Last edited by Void (2025-03-02 11:49:32)

tahanson43206 · 2025-03-13 16:49:57

Here is an update about Blue Ghost...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/lunar-lander … 03258.html

Lunar Lander Starts Drilling Into the Moon, Sparks Flying
Victor Tangermann
Wed, March 12, 2025 at 10:00 AM EDT
3 min read
Generate Key Takeaways
While Intuitive Machines' Athena lander quickly met its demise after awkwardly stumbling and ending up on its side, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost spacecraft, which touched down just a few days earlier, is leaping into action.
After sending back a stunning image of the Sun rising in the distant horizon, the lander wasted no time and kicked off its Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER) experiment.
The goal is to drill into the lunar surface within the Mare Crisium, a massive basin in the northeastern part of the Moon's near side, in hopes of better understanding the geology of the Earth's natural satellite.
In a video shared this week, the robot's pneumatic drill can be seen plowing through the rocky lunar surface, sending sparks and pieces of rubble flying.
While it's far from the first mission to drill into the lunar surface — astronauts used a drill during NASA's Apollo 15 mission over half a century ago — it's an exciting kick-off to what's bound to be a flurry of activity on the lunar surface.
As of right now, NASA's still looking to land the first astronauts on the Moon in a matter of years — and the scientific research being done as we speak could contribute to that goal.
https://twitter.com/Firefly_Space/statu … 9996766306
The aim of Blue Ghost's drilling is to measure the "temperature and flow of heat from the Moon’s interior," according to the company. By studying the thermal conductivity of the various layers of the lunar surface, scientists are hoping to glean insights into how the Moon formed and cooled over billions of years.
The probe was jointly developed by researchers from Texas Tech University and the California-based startup Honeybee Robotics under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
They're hoping to drill down to a depth of just shy of ten feet into the dusty regolith, as NASA explained in a December blog post. Every 1.6 feet, it will measure the heat flow and thermal conductivity of its surroundings using a custom-built thermal probe.
More in Science

"By making similar measurements at multiple locations on the lunar surface, we can reconstruct the thermal evolution of the Moon," said principal investigator and Texas Tech geophysics professor Seiichi Nagihara in a NASA statement. "That will permit scientists to retrace the geological processes that shaped the Moon from its start as a ball of molten rock, which gradually cooled off by releasing its internal heat into space."
The space agency is hoping to use the data to assist during its upcoming Artemis missions to the lunar surface and eventually develop a sustainable presence there.
Blue Ghost is also outfitted with nine other NASA payloads, including "active dust mitigation technology that uses electric fields to move and prevent hazardous lunar dust accumulation on surfaces," and an experiment to study "how lunar regolith sticks to a range of materials exposed to the Moon’s environment throughout the lunar day," according to the agency.
On Wednesday, Blue Ghost is trying to stay cool during the "lunar noontime heat," per Firefly. But as temperatures plummet, Blue Ghost is preparing to ramp up to "full power again soon."

(th)

GW Johnson · 2025-03-13 19:37:53

Firefly's "Blue Ghost" is a "short and squat" design, with feet farther apart than the height of its cg above the surface That is painfully obvious just looking at the photo. It meets the old criterion for rough field landing reliability that was so successful for Surveyor 1 and Surveyor 3, and all the Apollo landers that touched down.

Both of the Intuitive Machines landers were rather "tall and narrow", with the cg height larger than the pad span by far. Those designs violated the old rough-field landing criterion. That one is 1.5 < cg height/min pad span < 2.

Anyone else see the pattern here?

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2025-03-13 19:39:04)

GW Johnson · 2025-03-14 10:52:28

I found some dimension numbers for the Intuitive Machines "Athena" lander, plus some information that its altimeter failed before landing, as did its predecessor on "Odysseus", of similar dimensions. I used those dimensions to estimate crudely the min pad span to cg height ratio, and from that the critical static tip-over angle (roughly only 14 degrees). That plus the dimensions gave me the tip-over radius gone vertical, which on the moon implies a max horizontal speed at touchdown of only about 0.5 m/s.

Without an altitude figure, there is no way the lander could adjust its flight to touchdown at near-zero vertical and horizontal speeds. The far greater likelihood is that those vertical and horizontal speeds were multiple m/s. What that says is that neither machine could possibly land upright. The first "fix" is to get a reliable altimeter. But there is more to be fixed:

Even had the altimeters not failed, so that touchdown speeds could be zeroed, there is still a high probability of a tip-over, with the critical static tip-over angle being only about 14 degrees! At the dimensional scale of the lander, slopes on the moon are already known to often be much higher than that 14 degree figure, anywhere near the rims of craters! That critical tip-over angle needs to approach 40 degrees, which it did with the Apollo landers and the Surveyor probes, long ago. And recently with Firefly Aerospaces's "Blue Ghost".

And THAT HIGH TIP-OVER ANGLE is "short-and-squat", not "tall-and-narrow"!

SpaceX's lunar Starship variant has exactly the same risk, inherently being tall and narrow: something like 50-60 m long, with a pad footprint "diameter" closer to 10-12 m. Maybe 15 m. Maybe. Doesn't matter: any of those proportions are at least as bad as the ones for "Athena" and "Odysseus".

Are you listening out there, SpaceX? You ought to be, you're supposed to land humans on the moon with your vehicle in the next year or three! It would be nice if they survived that landing. Or doesn't your contract specify that?

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2025-03-14 11:05:23)

GW Johnson · 2025-03-19 10:52:04

From AIAA's "Daily Launch" for Wed 3-19-2025:

Ars Technica
Here’s the secret to how Firefly was able to nail its first lunar landing
Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost science station accomplished a lot on the Moon in the last two weeks. Among other things, its instruments drilled into the Moon's surface, tested an extraterrestrial vacuum cleaner, and showed that future missions could use GPS navigation signals to navigate on the lunar surface. These are all important achievements, gathering data that could shed light on the Moon's formation and evolution, demonstrating new ways of collecting samples on other planets, and revealing the remarkable reach of the US military's GPS satellite network.

------
my take on it:

The link to the much longer Ars Technica article is where the "secret" really is. They have a photo of the Blue Ghost in a shop before loading and launch. The photo shows the min pad span directly (of 4 legs). A good guess for the cg height "just looking at the photo" says min pad span/cg height ~ 2. The old criterion is 1.5 to 2. They really tried to do rough/soft field landing right, and it shows in the longer Ars Technica article's descriptions of all the things they did t ensure a good landing. Their software and cameras were able to do what Armstrong and Aldrin did on Apollo-11: see and avoid obstacles.

GW

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#1 2025-02-02 07:45:57

Blue Ghost Lunar Lander by Firefly from Texas

#2 2025-02-02 07:46:34

Re: Blue Ghost Lunar Lander by Firefly from Texas

#3 2025-02-24 18:31:56

Re: Blue Ghost Lunar Lander by Firefly from Texas

#4 2025-03-02 07:56:02

Re: Blue Ghost Lunar Lander by Firefly from Texas

#5 2025-03-02 11:47:49

Re: Blue Ghost Lunar Lander by Firefly from Texas

#6 2025-03-13 16:49:57

Re: Blue Ghost Lunar Lander by Firefly from Texas

#7 2025-03-13 19:37:53

Re: Blue Ghost Lunar Lander by Firefly from Texas

#8 2025-03-14 10:52:28

Re: Blue Ghost Lunar Lander by Firefly from Texas

#9 2025-03-19 10:52:04

Re: Blue Ghost Lunar Lander by Firefly from Texas

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