Firefly’s Blue Ghost Lander Drills into Moon’s Surface

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander successfully landed on the moon on March 2 to become the first commercial spacecraft to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface. The spacecraft landed in Mare Crisium, a dark basaltic plain formed by an ancient asteroid impact. NASA describes this region as, “large, dark, basaltic plain on the Moon that filled an ancient asteroid impact.”

What’s the purpose behind this landing?

Equipped with Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER), a sophisticated drill developed by Texas Tech University and Honeybee Robotics, its purpose is aimed at measuring the Moon’s thermal gradient and conductivity.

The data derived from the landing is critical to the scientists as it tells them how heat moves beneath the surface and helps map out the Moon’s internal composition. By going through these studies researchers will be able to understand the Moon’s thermal evolution over billions of years.

Conditions on Moon

Conducting operations on the Moon is no easy feat. Temperature during the day can go up to 121°C, posing a serious challenge for instruments. To cope with such situations Blue Ghost employs a power cycling strategy to keep equipment within operational limits.

Future outlook

Notably, the mission is a part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, allowing private companies to send robotic landers to the Moon. These missions act as stepping stones for the Artemis programme, which aims to put astronauts back on the Moon and, eventually, establish a permanent base.