Cabo Cañaveral, Florida, USA – The lights are turned off for the first private lunar module that achieved a completely successful moon mission.
The Blue Ghost module of Firefly Aerospace was silent during the weekend, concluding two weeks of experiments scientists for NASA. The end came when the sun stood on the moon, ceasing to provide energy to the solar panels of the module.
“The mission has been completed,” said Firefly CEO, Jason Kim, through X on Sunday night. “But the Ghost is still alive in our hearts and minds for the trip that has made us live!”
1/15 | An astronomical show: thus the “blood moon” was seen around the world. A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon, the earth and the sun align. Thus began to see the moon from Chicago when the event started. – Kiichiro Sato
The module operated five hours at lunar night as planned before he stopped working on Sunday afternoon. Kim indicated that photos of the lunar sunset and the glow on Tuesday will be published.
Blue Ghost was launched from Cabo Cañaveral in January as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Delivery Program. Aluniza at the northeast end of the moon on March 2. He carried a drill, a vacuum and other scientific and technological instruments for NASA. Firefly confirmed Monday that the 10 experiments worked.
At the end of last week, Blue Ghost registered a total solar eclipse from the moon – a total lunar eclipse seen from the earth.
The Firefly company, based in Texas, became the first private company to land on the moon without falling or crashing, after a series of failed missions of other companies in recent years. Only five countries – United States, Russia, China, India and Japan – have achieved successful alunage.
A lunar module of a Japanese company shared the spacex rocket trip, but took an even longer route to reach the moon. This ISPACE module aims at the beginning of June.
The module of another Texas company, Intuitive Machines, ended up on a crater near the South Pole of the Moon earlier this month, condemning the mission. It was the second incomplete mission for intuitive machines. His first module led the United States back to the moon last year for the first time from the Apollo era, after a less perfect than perfect that hindered communications.
Firefly is already working on her next lunar module and strives to perform a moon landing per year.
This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.