The extended weekend score through today, Monday, March 3 is Firefly 1, SpaceX 0. We have to restrict this to Firefly's Blue Ghost lander and SpaceX's Starship flight test 8 and ignore things like last night's Falcon 9-carried Starlink 12-20 mission because it was a Falcon 9 launch and not a Starship. Not to mention that it was another Falcon 9 that lifted Blue Ghost into its translunar orbit injection.
That said, congratulations to Firefly's team for successfully landing their Blue Ghost lander on the moon at 3:34 AM EST Sunday morning, making Firefly Aerospace the first private company in world history to achieve that. The first private lander was Intuitive Machine's IM-1, but although all the paying customers were happy with what they got from their landing on the moon, Odysseus - quickly nicknamed Odie, wasn't considered a successful landing. During final approach, a leg on the lander broke and after engine cutoff Odie quickly face-planted on the moon.
Blue Ghost apparently had better software and quite possibly its overall design as well. In coverage of the landing, there is mention of obstacle avoidance being invoked in the autonomous landing software.
A camera on Firefly's Blue Ghost lander captured a view of its shadow after touching down on the Moon just after sunrise. Earth looms over the horizon. Credit: Firefly Aerospace
"They’re just fired up right now in the mission control room," said Jason Kim, Firefly's CEO. "They were all just pent up, holding it all in because they were calm, collected, and cool the whole time. Every single thing was clockwork, even when we landed. After we saw everything was stable and upright, they were fired up."
Before IM-1 last year, it had been more than 50 years since an American spacecraft made a controlled landing on the Moon and all of those were government-run projects. Similarly, China has landed four robotic missions on the Moon since 2013, including two landings on the Moon's far side and two sample return missions. India became the fourth country to land on the Moon in 2023, then Japan became the fifth in January 2024. Sunday morning's Blue Ghost landing marked the first exception to that government-run predominance in landers.
Intuitive Machines IM-2, or Athena, entered her circular lunar orbit today, March 3rd. The the
landing will be closer to the lunar South Pole than any other mission to
date.
Flight controllers expect Athena to complete 39 lunar orbits until her south pole region landing site has adequate sunlight to power surface operations.
Intuitive Machines expects a landing opportunity on March 6 at 11:32 a.m. CST. Live landing coverage is scheduled to start at 10:30 a.m. CT / 11:30 a.m. ET on the Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission page and NASA+. The content on both streams is identical.
As for Starship Flight Test 8, SpaceX's Missions Page hasn't posted a date for the next attempt yet.
Those Fireflies made it look like a cake walk. Serious, they made it look easy, smooth as glass right to contact, they figured out the crazy curve, that transition between horizontal thrust and pitch-over. It was perfect, even with the terrain avoidance changes added in.
ReplyDeleteIt was day of the scrub. Arian Space scrubbed too.
ReplyDeleteWatched the rollback of Starship. And noticed that the engine 'attic' is now very well ventilated, with many vent slits cut into the non-tiled side.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to New Space, V1.2
ReplyDeleteThe Blue Ghost silhouette looks like an image from the old Space Invaders video game. Glad it made it to ground level, upright.
ReplyDeleteLatest on Starship IFT-8, the launch has been rescheduled to 5:30 PM CST on 5 March (tomorrow). Starship has been de-mounted for whatever work they are doing.
ReplyDeleteStill no stars in that shot. Obvious fake moon landing. I read it on the internet, so it must be so. [/sarc]
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/rPmMN0Hsbw8
DeleteTyson says:
Delete1) he explains the exposure issue fairly well
2) it's photography 101 for anyone who understood film cameras
3) but lots of websites and such make this argument
so, therefore
4) people want to believe it's fake
I think an alternative explanation is
4) people don't know the first thing about photography other than "point my camera and click" (or point my phone).
Ackchyually, I think his statement about if you were on the moon and looked up, you'd see stars is overly simplistic. Your eyes are going to be stopped down if you're on the sunlit side. You'd need to be protected from the sunlight, and staring up until your eyes adapted to the light. Someone standing on the sunlit side isn't going to see the stars if they're exposed to the foreground too. Much as film has a dynamic range problem, so do our eyes.
But since he's talking at first grade level, I won't make a big deal about that and call him a moron.