NASA’s Firefly Aerospace has shared poignant footage of its Blue Ghost lunar lander shutting down for the last time. The solar-powered lander, which launched in January and landed on March 2, captured stunning high-definition images of the sun setting over the moon’s horizon before entering darkness.
The footage, released yesterday, marks a significant milestone in the Blue Ghost mission, which aimed to test NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Firefly Aerospace’s mission was sponsored by NASA, with the agency’s instruments collecting data on the lunar environment for two weeks.
Blue Ghost was designed to operate for only a short period due to the extreme cold of lunar night, lasting about two Earth weeks. Its silence is likely permanent, but Firefly representatives remain optimistic that they might receive a signal from the lander after the sun rises again over the same crater.
The mission’s success was attributed to the collaboration between Firefly Aerospace and NASA, with scientists hailing the Blue Ghost as “a bunch of physics analysis” opportunities. The data collected during the mission will inform models of light scattering and illumination on the lunar surface.
Source: https://www.space.com/the-universe/moon/watch-the-sun-set-over-the-moon-in-epic-video-from-private-blue-ghost-lunar-lander