Firefly Aerospace is now four weeks into their first mission to the Moon—Blue Ghost recently completed its Trans Lunar Injection (TLI) to escape Earth’s orbit and is now in transit to the Moon.
Shortly after TLI, Blue Ghost captured two new incredible shots—one of Earth with the Moon in the distance and one of Earth reflecting off the Blue Ghost’s solar panel with the Moon on the horizon. These images can be found on Firefly’s Live Blog and follow along for regular mission updates.
Next Steps…
- Transit: Within the next two days, Blue Ghost will perform a Lunar Orbit Insertion, a 4-minute burn to enter the Moon’s orbit and will then spend 16 days in lunar orbit before descent. This gives us plenty of time to calibrate our navigation system and continue payload science operations for NASA.
- Descent: Blue Ghost’s final autonomous descent will take approximately an hour, starting with a Descent Orbit Insertion burn that will place Blue Ghost on its descent trajectory on March 2.
- Surface Operations: Upon touchdown, Blue Ghost will operate 10 NASA instruments for a complete lunar day (about 14 Earth days).
- Total Eclipse: On March 14, Blue Ghost will capture HD imagery of a total eclipse from the Moon where the Earth blocks the sun.
- Lunar Night: Blue Ghost will then capture the lunar sunset on March 16 before operating several hours into the lunar night.
