With the Blue Ghost lunar mission coming to an end this week, the spacecraft has gifted scientists and the public with an incredible send-off. The moon lander captured the first ever HD imagery of a sunset as seen from the moon, and the images have been stitched together into a video.
The stunning footage shows the sun setting over the moon’s horizon; an event which happens on the moon just one per month. A lunar day lasts for two weeks, and the Blue Ghost used this time to perform its experiments on the moon’s surface and collect solar power from the sun. Then the two-week-long lunar night begins and it is too dark for the spacecraft to collect power — but first, the lander got to observe one last sight of the sun setting.
“Lunar sunset imagery that was captured by Blue Ghost from different camera angles on March 16,” Firefly Aerospace wrote sharing the footage. “These images, stitched together in a video, show a horizon glow that comes to life just above the Moon’s surface as the sun goes down. Earth and Venus (further in the distance) are also shown above the Moon. The NASA science team is excited to analyze these images further and share more on the findings soon.”
The mission landed on March 2 and officially came to an end on 6:15 p.m. CT on March 16, with the spacecraft having saved enough power to operate for five hours into the lunar night and to collect data on the nighttime conditions there as well.
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Other private companies have had varying levels of success in their lunar missions, like Intuitive Machines which has completed soft landings on the moon twice but had both its landers fall over, or ispace which has failed at one lunar landing but has another landing attempt coming up soon. But the Blue Ghost mission is notable for being successful in meeting all of its mission objectives on the first go, with landing, surface operations, and lunar night observations all achieved.
“After a flawless Moon landing, the Firefly team immediately moved into surface operations to ensure all 10 NASA payloads could capture as much science as possible during the lunar day,” said Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly Aerospace.
“We’re incredibly proud of the demonstrations Blue Ghost enabled from tracking GPS signals on the Moon for the first time to robotically drilling and collecting science deeper into the lunar surface than ever before. We want to extend a huge thank you to the NASA CLPS initiative and the White House administration for serving as the bedrock for this Firefly mission. It has been an honor to enable science and technology experiments that support future missions to the moons, Mars, and beyond.”