US private spaceship is close to making a daring touchdown on the Moon
After traversing a long journey through space, a US spacecraft is poised to make a daring touchdown on the Moon and become the only second private lander to achieve the feat if it succeeds, media reports said.
Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1 is targeting landing around 3:34 am US Eastern time (0834 GMT) on Sunday.
It is aiming to make the landing at a site near Mons Latreille, a volcanic feature in Mare Crisium on the Moon's northeastern near side.
"Blue Ghost is ready to take the wheel!" The company posted on X on Saturday evening, adding flight controllers had just initiated a key maneuver that lowered a spacecraft's orbit.
With a suite of @NASA science and technology on board, @Firefly_Space is targeting no earlier than 3:34 a.m. EST on Sunday, March 2, to land the Blue Ghost lunar lander on the Moon.
— NASA Marshall (@NASA_Marshall) February 28, 2025
Live coverage will air on NASA+ around 75 minutes before touchdown >> https://t.co/7VZfUW0mjK pic.twitter.com/yqVe0OB48v
Nicknamed "Ghost Riders in the Sky," the mission comes just a year after the first-ever commercial lunar landing.
It is part of a NASA partnership with industry to cut costs and support Artemis.
The program aims to return astronauts to the Moon.
The golden lander, about the size of a hippopotamus, was launched on January 15 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
It has so far captured footage of Earth and the Moon as it travelled through the space. It shared a ride with a Japanese company's lander set to attempt a landing in May.
Blue Ghost carries ten instruments, including a lunar soil analyzer, a radiation-tolerant computer and an experiment testing the feasibility of using the existing global satellite navigation system to navigate the Moon, said reports.
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