{"id":24455,"date":"2025-03-21T18:46:35","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T19:46:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=24455"},"modified":"2025-03-21T20:24:48","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T20:24:48","slug":"after-lunar-disappointments-nasa-hits-the-jackpot-with-blue-ghost-moon-lander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=24455","title":{"rendered":"After Lunar Disappointments, NASA Hits the Jackpot With Blue Ghost Moon Lander"},"content":{"rendered":"

Firefly Aerospace\u2019s successful moon lander has yielded a trove of data that scientists will pore over for years.<\/p>\n

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NASA made a bet a few years ago that commercial companies could take scientific experiments to the moon on a lower budget than the agency could.<\/p>\n

Last year, that was a bad bet. The first NASA-financed spacecraft missed the moon entirely<\/a>. The second landed but fell over<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But this month, a robotic lander named Blue Ghost, built by Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas, succeeded from start to finish<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On March 16, the mood at Firefly\u2019s mission operations outside Austin was a mix of happy and melancholic. There was nothing more to worry about, nothing left to do \u2014 except watch the company\u2019s spacecraft die.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A quarter-million miles away, the sun had already set on Mare Crisium, the lunar lava plain where Blue Ghost had collected scientific observations for two weeks.<\/p>\n

For the solar-powered spacecraft, the hours remaining were numbered and few.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Cheers erupted at Firefly\u2019s mission operations center outside Austin, Texas, when the Blue Ghost lander touched down on the moon on March 2.<\/span>NASA\/Firefly Aerospace, via Associated Press<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A Lunar Lander\u2019s Busy Day: Eclipse Photos and Rock Collecting<\/h2>\n

The sun has set on the Blue Ghost spacecraft, ending a successful mission to the moon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Firefly Aerospace\u2019s successful moon lander has yielded a trove of data that scientists will pore over for years.NASA made a bet a few years ago that commercial companies could take scientific experiments to the moon on a lower budget than the agency could.Last year, that was a bad bet. The first NASA-financed spacecraft missed the moon entirely. The second landed but fell over.But this month, a robotic lander named Blue Ghost, built by Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas, succeeded from start to finish.On March 16, the mood at Firefly\u2019s mission operations outside Austin was a mix of happy and melancholic. There was nothing more to worry about, nothing left to do \u2014 except watch the company\u2019s spacecraft die.A quarter-million miles away, the sun had already set on Mare Crisium, the lunar lava plain where Blue Ghost had collected scientific observations for two weeks.For the solar-powered spacecraft, the hours remaining were numbered and few.Cheers erupted at Firefly\u2019s mission operations center outside Austin, Texas, when the Blue Ghost lander touched down on the moon on March 2.NASA\/Firefly Aerospace, via Associated PressA Lunar Lander\u2019s Busy Day: Eclipse Photos and Rock CollectingThe sun has set on the Blue Ghost spacecraft, ending a successful mission to the moon.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24457,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24455"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24460,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24455\/revisions\/24460"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}