Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Pre-launch image of Blue Ghost lunar lander. Image credit: Firefly Aerospace

The commercial Blue Ghost moonbound lander has just over a week left in Earth orbit.

What comes next is performing the critical Trans Lunar Injection, a propulsive nudge that gives the craft a “transit ticket” to the Moon for about four days of coast period.

That engine burn will last for about 16 seconds, Firefly Aerospace told Inside Outer Space.

So far, following its January 15 takeoff, the moonbound lander is over two weeks into the group’s first mission to the Moon.

Image credit: Firefly Aerospace

Landing date

“Our Blue Ghost lunar lander has already clocked 715,000 miles, downlinked more than 7 GB of data, and completed several NASA payload science operations,” a just-issued Firefly Aerospace statement explains.

Blue Ghost is then slated to perform a Lunar Orbit Insertion and spend 16 days in lunar orbit before descent.

Blue Ghost’s final autonomous descent will take roughly an hour, starting with a Descent Orbit Insertion burn that will place Blue Ghost on its descent trajectory on March 2.

Blue Ghost will capture imagery of the lunar sunset and provide critical data on how lunar regolith reacts to solar influences during lunar dusk conditions. The lander will then operate for several hours into the lunar night.
Artwork credit: Firefly Aerospace/Inside Outer Space screengrab

Day/night operations

Blue Ghost is targeted to touchdown on the near side of the Moon near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium.

If all goes well, upon touchdown, Blue Ghost will operate 10 NASA instruments for a complete lunar day (about 14 Earth days). Just before lunar night also approximately a 14 day period of time, Blue Ghost will capture high definition imagery of a total eclipse from the Moon where the Earth blocks the sun.

Those NASA instruments are onboard as part of the space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

At the end of the mission, the Blue Ghost Moon lander will capture the lunar sunset before operating several hours into the lunar night.

Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander captured the Moon in the distance and Earth on the horizon from its top deck, showing the LEXI payload (right) and X-band antenna.
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace

First-ever images

One of Blue Ghost’s scientific payloads is a telescope that will capture the first-ever global images of the magnetic field that shields Earth from solar radiation.

The X-ray telescope is mounted on top of the lander, an instrument designed to capture the first-ever images of X-rays emanating from the edges of our planet’s vast magnetosphere.

That instrument, the Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager, or LEXI, was created by Brian Walsh, a Boston University College of Engineering associate professor.

Following Blue Ghost’s lunar landing, LEXI is set to deploy and power up, directing its focus back toward Earth as it collects images of the X-rays emanating from the edges of Earth’s magnetosphere.

Status report video

An array of other instruments are on the lunar lander, including devices designed to characterize the structure and composition of the Moon’s mantle by measuring electric and magnetic fields, collect regolith samples from the lunar surface using a burst of compressed gas, and gauge heat flow from the Moon’s interior.

Go to this informative, status-report video at:

https://youtu.be/eAiR_PIYwfA?si=AtxVw2hh03XaLl2T