2d ago

Blue Ghost, a Private U.S. Spacecraft, Sticks Its Lunar Landing

www.scientificamerican.com Blue Ghost, a Private U.S. Spacecraft, Sticks Its Lunar Landing

After its successful lunar touchdown, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost mission could soon be joined on the moon by two more commercial spacecraft

Blue Ghost, a NASA-funded lunar lander built and operated by the private U.S. company Firefly Aerospace, has successfully touched down on the moon.

After 45 days in space—and a pulse-pounding semi-autonomous hour-long descent to its landing site—at 3:34 A.M. EST the boxy, car-sized spacecraft’s four footpad-tipped legs crunched into the surface of Mare Crisium, a vast and ancient impact basin filled with frozen lava on the moon’s northeastern near side. This marks the second time the U.S. has soft-landed on the moon since the crewed Apollo 17 mission of 1972

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I really don't get the hardon for getting humans in space I think we should figure out how much we can max out robots and such doing things and when we simply cannot figure out how to do something without a human then maybe send up bodies.
- What are you on about? This is a robotic mission.
  
  I realize a lot of online comments are either support or complaint about an article but Im a bit wierd in that sometimes I just comment around the subject. What got me thinking about it is it did not seem to have a rover or anything so was a bit disapointed (unless the article simply did not mention it or felt measurements implied that). So my comment is just on the nasa back to the moon and musks american flags on mars stuff. articles like this just get me thinking about the subject.
  
  This line of landers is a delivery system. This mission was to prove they can do it successfully. It carried ten scientific experiment payloads, as noted in the article.
- Asteroid capture doesn't seem out of the realm of near future possibility. Then we could directly mine and refine materials in space with robots, sparing the earth more climate altering pollution and saving humans from slave work in unregulated mines.
  
  yeah I mean even just trying different tests and working towards it.

10 comments