Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Image credit: Firefly Aerospace

The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission 1, named Ghost Riders in the Sky, launched on January 15 and completed its 45-day Earth to Moon transit before softly touching down on the Moon on March 2.

Image credit: Firefly Aerospace

That touchdown signified that Firefly is the first commercial company in history to achieve “a fully successful Moon landing,” the group notes.

Carrying 10 NASA instruments, Blue Ghost completed a precision landing in Mare Crisium and touched down within a 328-feet (100-meters) landing target next to a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille.

Blue Ghost is now performing 14 days of surface operations, using a host of payloads.

Image credit: Firefly Aerospace

Working hypothesis

Meanwhile, Pascal Lee, a noted planetary scientist, has pieced together intriguing looks at the possible whereabouts of Blue Ghost – 1, the Moon lander flown by Firefly Aerospace of Cedar, Texas.

Given that Blue Ghost-1 landed roughly 100 meters of its target, Lee speculates where the Moon probe came to full stop. Drawing from released images so far, he notes that the lighting is not optimal at this point in time.  So for now, “just a working hypothesis,” he adds.

Image credit: Pascal Lee

Flight path

In earlier research, Lee reconstructed Blue Ghost-1’s orbital flight path over the lunar far side with names of prominent craters labeled, as shown a Firefly Aerospace issued video.

Image credit: Pascal Lee

Lee works at the Mars Institute and the SETI Institute, and is a professor of planetary science at Kepler Space University. He is also director of the NASA Haughton-Mars Project (HMP) at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

Every single Firefly employee’s name is etched on the Blue Ghost lunar lander plaque and is now on the Moon’s surface.
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace