The successful landing of a spacecraft on the moon by a company based in the United States is a significant achievement in the field of space exploration.
It is only the second private mission to accomplish the feat, and it is the first to land upright. This new development marks a significant milestone.
The Blue Ghost Mission 1 belonging to Firefly Aerospace successfully landed on Sunday at 3:34 a.m. Eastern Time (08:34 GMT) in the vicinity of Mons Latreille, which is a volcanic formation located in Mare Crisium on the Moon’s northeastern near side, as reported by the BBC.
The spaceship was able to navigate the rough and cratered landscape on its own, bringing its speed down from thousands of miles per hour to nothing more than two miles per hour before landing with pinpoint accuracy.
An engineer working at Firefly’s mission control in Austin, Texas, yelled out to the team, “Y’all stuck the landing—we’re on the Moon!” while the team exclaimed in jubilation.
The chief executive officer of Firefly, Jason Kim, ascertained that the lander was stable and upright, which stands in stark contrast to the first private lunar mission, which was carried out in February of last year and landed on its side.
There was also a celebration of the accomplishment by officials from NASA. An associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, Nicky Fox, screamed, “We’re on the Moon!” for the first time.
As part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which intends to reduce costs and advance the Artemis program, which is planned to return men to the Moon, this mission, which has been given the nickname “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” is among the programs that are being carried out.
Over the course of its voyage, the golden lander, which is approximately the size of a hippopotamus, traveled 2.8 million miles after being launched on January 15 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Stunning photographs of the Moon and the Earth were taken by the spacecraft as it traveled. During its journey into space, the mission was also accompanied by a Japanese lander, which is making an attempt to land on the moon in the month of May.
Among the ten scientific equipment that Blue Ghost is carrying are a radiation-resistant computer, a lunar soil analyzer, and an experiment that attempts to determine whether or not global satellite navigation systems could be of assistance to future trips to the Moon.
On March 14, when the Earth will block the Sun from the horizon of the Moon, the lander is planned to take high-definition photos of a total eclipse.
The lander is designed to operate for 14 Earth days, which is equivalent to one full lunar day by Earth. Scientists will have a better understanding of how dust particles rise above the surface of the moon as a result of solar radiation when it successfully records a lunar sunset on March 16.
An Apollo astronaut named Eugene Cernan was the first person to notice this phenomena, which is now known as the lunar horizon glow.
