Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost

[Baz]

Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost, or simply Blue Ghost, is a class of lunar landers designed and manufactured by Firefly Aerospace. Firefly plans to operate Blue Ghost landers to deliver small payloads to the surface of the Moon. The first Blue Ghost mission was launched at 1:11 a.m. EST (06:11 UTC) on January 15, 2025. It has an expected landing date of March 2, 2025. It is named after the firefly Phausis reticulata known as the Blue Ghost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_Aerospace_Blue_Ghost



Firefly's Blue Ghost lander captured more incredible footage of the Moon during its third lunar orbit maneuver on February 24 that inserted the spacecraft in a near-circular low lunar orbit. The footage below, sped up by 10X, was captured about 100 km above the lunar surface, showing the far side of the Moon and a top-down view of Blue Ghost's RCS thrusters (center) and radiator panels on each side. The radiator panels are moving nominally to protect Blue Ghost's subsystems from extreme temperatures.

[Baz]

Much more on the Firefly Aerospace YT channel. Check out the young engineers involved in the project. How inspiring!

https://www.youtube.com/@FireflySpace/videos

Here's just one of them:

[billybek]

Cool! Thanks for posting this. I hadn't heard of this group before.

[Baz]

Originally Posted by billybek

Cool! Thanks for posting this. I hadn't heard of this group before.

Thanks for watching and your comment, Bill. Pretty amazing stuff!

[ErVikingo]

Awesome! Long live the nerds!

[onewhippedpuppy]

Very cool, I had also not heard of them. As an aerospace engineer I always dreamed of working in the space industry, but got stuck playing with airplanes instead.

[flipper35]

Firefly has gone through a lot over the years. They need this one to go well for them.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

[3rd_gear_Ted]

Dead reckoning got Lindbergh to Paris, now it got the firefly to the moon.

[stealthn]

Congrats to them, I can’t imagine the Engineering required to go to the moon!

But then again, the did it with slide rules and cigarettes, soooooo

[Baz]

Watch Firefly land on the Moon! After identifying surface hazards and selecting a safe landing site, Blue Ghost landed directly over the target in Mare Crisium. Our Ghost Riders have since downlinked our landing footage for the world to see -- a historic moment on March 2 we'll never forget. We have Moon dust on our boots!

[93nav]

Congratulations to Firefly Aerospace. Very impressive.