Firefly Aerospace said its Blue Ghost lander returned more than 119 gigabytes of data to Earth in total and also captured rare images of a total solar eclipse.
The device finally powered down on Saturday, two weeks after it touched down and significantly hours after its mission was due to finish.
The landing marked the first time a private company had perfectly landed a spacecraft on the moon in a breakthrough moment for the global space industry.
“This team continues to make near-impossible achievements look easy, but there is no such thing as an easy moon landing, especially on your first attempt,” said Will Coogan, Blue Ghost’s chief engineer.
“Our team may look younger and less experienced than those of many nations and companies that attempted moon landings before us, but the support we have for one another is what fuels the hard work and dedication to finding every solution that made this mission a success.”
Blue Ghost blasted off onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 in January and touched down upright on 2 March.
The landing followed two nerve-racking avoidance manoeuvres that allowed it to dodge boulders on its autonomous descent.
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Its faultless touchdown was near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium, a large basin located in the northeast quadrant of the moon’s near side.
In total, Blue Ghost contained 10 instruments that carried out tasks on behalf of NASA’s wider Artemis mission, including tech to analyse lunar soil, much like Australia’s upcoming rover.
It eventually lasted five hours longer than expected after spending a full lunar day on the surface, equivalent to 14 days on Earth.
“We’re incredibly proud of the demonstrations Blue Ghost enabled from tracking GPS signals on the moon for the first time to robotically drilling deeper into the lunar surface than ever before,” said Jason Kim, Firefly’s CEO.
Its payloads included cameras that monitored the plumes of material kicked up by the spacecraft’s engines and technology to examine the feasibility of an electrodynamic dust shield to remove remove regolith from spacecraft surface.
The mission was part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program that aims to effectively outsource missions to private companies, encouraging growth and learning in the commercial sector.
Blue Ghost’s progress will likely be watched closely by Australia’s ELO2, which is also being tasked by NASA with creating a lunar rover that will similarly analyse regolith or moon soil.
ELO2 beat AROSE in December to be tasked with creating the device and said work on the final design would begin immediately.
Regolith can both become oxygen that humans can breathe or aid the production of rocket fuel necessary to support the launch of a rocket from the moon to Mars and beyond.
The ELO2 consortium consists of organisations, including universities, small and medium-sized enterprises and those in the mining sector. In particular, the University of Adelaide is responsible for the rover’s ongoing testing, Inovor provided the electrical power system, and BHP provided expertise in excavation.
Firefly’s success comes despite a separate private mission by Intuitive Machines failing days later, with the craft powering down shortly after landing on its side.
The bodged landing was remarkably similar to Intuitive Machines’ first lunar attempt last year, though that mission was ultimately declared an “unqualified success” by NASA.
Adam Thorn
Adam is a journalist who has worked for more than 40 prestigious media brands in the UK and Australia. Since 2005, his varied career has included stints as a reporter, copy editor, feature writer and editor for publications as diverse as Fleet Street newspaper The Sunday Times, fashion bible Jones, media and marketing website Mumbrella as well as lifestyle magazines such as GQ, Woman’s Weekly, Men’s Health and Loaded. He joined Momentum Media in early 2020 and currently writes for Australian Aviation and World of Aviation.
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