March 8th, 2025
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The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Moon lander has deployed electrodes on the lunar surface, an experiment to study the deep interior of the Moon. Shortly after its March 2 landing, Blue Ghost deployed four tethered Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) electrodes, developed by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). The LMS experiment is designed to probe the structure […]
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That hush-hush flight of the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle-7 (OTV-7) has come to full stop – landing at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California on March 7 at 02:22 a.m. Easter Standard Time. This seventh mission of the space plane program remained on-orbit for over 434 days. It was launched to a highly elliptical high Earth […]
The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost lunar lander continues to check off operations of its science experiments. Blue Ghost successfully landed in Mare Crisium on March 2 and is now operating payloads for a complete lunar day (about 14 Earth days). Firefly Aerospace reports that eight out of ten NASA-sponsored payloads have met their mission […]
The latest lander to touch down on the Moon is the Intuitive Machine IM-2 mission. However, its status appears not to be optimal, apparently tipped over on landing. On March 6, the Athena lander made its way down to attempt a landing in Mons Mouton, a lunar plateau near the Moon’s South Pole. The effort […]
Firefly Aerospace reports that their Blue Ghost Moon lander is engaged in surface operations of select NASA payloads. Those operations include the deployment of the Lunar PlanetVac and sampling lunar regolith, deploying the Electrodynamic Dust Shield and demonstrating dust mitigation, capturing images from the Stereo CAmera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS). Rocket plume SCALPSS […]
The ongoing steps taken by President Donald Trump’s administration to transform and reduce in size the federal workforce is a work in progress. The topsy-turvy action plan is already impacting the space science and exploration community. The shake-up includes the President Trump-okayed establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory group to modernize […]
A water-scouting Moon orbiter has been in trouble since its deployment February 26 as a ride share payload atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster. Ground controllers for the NASA/Caltech-led Lunar Trailblazer have valiantly been trying to re-establish communications with the small satellite. “Based on telemetry before the loss of signal last week and ground-based radar […]
The sharp-shooting camera system onboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has spotted the landing locale of the commercial Blue Ghost lander. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander safely touched down in the eastern part of the Moon’s Mare Crisium at 19 degrees north and 62 degrees east reports Mark Robinson, leader of the LROC […]
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. That touchdown signified that Firefly is the first commercial company in history to achieve “a fully successful Moon landing,” […]
NASA’s Europa Clipper, now en route to Jupiter, departed with less-than-satisfactory and vulnerable devices that are susceptible to Jupiter’s intense radiation. The spacecraft’s liftoff on October 14 of last year, in many ways, is arguably a fingers-crossed undertaking, but one that has already produced a number of lessons-learned provisos, including the use of “Mil-Spec” parts […]
