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Firefly’s First Robotic Commercial Moon Landing https://fireflyspace.com/missions/blue-ghost-mission-1/
Blue Ghost Mission 1 will deliver 10 science and technology instruments to the lunar surface as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. Upon launching on January 15, Blue Ghost is spending approximately 45 days traveling to the Moon, allowing ample time to conduct health checks on each subsystem and begin payload science.
Blue Ghost is set to land in Mare Crisium on March 2 and operate payloads for a complete lunar day (about 14 Earth days). On March 14, Firefly expects to capture high-definition imagery of a total eclipse when the Earth blocks the sun above the Moon’s horizon.
Blue Ghost will then capture the lunar sunset on March 16, providing data on how lunar dust levitates due to solar influences and creates a lunar horizon glow first documented by Eugene Cernan on Apollo 17. Following sunset, Blue Ghost will operate several hours into the lunar night. . #News #Politics #Trump 47 #Juan O Savin #Nino #Jennifer Mac #Michael Jaco #Education #Republican #USAID #Documentary #
00:07We have acquisition of signal with the Blue Ghost Network.
00:22My name is Faris Berry and I'm the Director of Spacecraft Mission Management here at Firefly Aerospace
00:27and I'm on the payload console for Blue Ghost Mission 1.
00:30My name is Alan Butler. I am the Blue Ghost AI and T lead and for the mission I'm on the systems console.
00:36So we are in week six of Blue Ghost Mission 1. We're prepping for descent, which is kind of the big Super Bowl for us.
00:42It's happening on Sunday morning and so everything up to this point has just been getting ready for that.
00:47LOI 3 was our final lunar orbit burn to get us in place for descent.
00:51So that put us into a nearly circular orbit with a hundred kilometer perilune,
00:55which is right where we want to be when we hit that breaking burn for descent.
00:58For LOI 3 we actually scheduled the command to be done while we were in a calm blackout
01:04and it was about 27 minutes that we had to wait to acquire a signal again
01:09and to make sure that everything went nominally for that burn.
01:13It's a little nerve-wracking when you're doing these commands in a calm blackout.
01:18We've practiced these things enough that they were able to go as planned,
01:22but really we're just waiting for a time period to come out of a calm blackout,
01:27reacquire a signal, and then recapture all of the telemetry during that outage from the lander
01:34and look at that and make sure that everything is still nominal.
01:37We're able to get all of the data down during that time where we're outside of a calm blackout.
01:43This week so far feels like another week in the office. There's a lot behind us.
01:47We've gotten through a lot of milestones to get here, and so we're in the stages of final preparation,
01:51looking at procedures the last couple times, running through the last few simulations and rehearsals.
01:56The anxiety is starting to tick up day by day, but everyone's feeling really good about where we are and ready to nail it.
02:02Throughout the mission so far, we have brought down 24 gigabytes of data down,
02:08so that is inclusive of payload data, inclusive of all of the imagery data, and all the telemetry that we've gotten down from the lander.
02:17The total amount of payload data that we've brought down is about 3.5 gigabytes.
02:21I'm really proud to say that we've met all of our mission requirements to date for the payloads.
02:27We're doing health checks, we're preparing them for descent operations, we're preparing them for lunar surface operations
02:33to make sure that everything is right where we want it to be, and we can attend that command to autonomously do our entire descent portion of the mission.
02:43Everybody's feeling really optimistic about Sunday.
02:45It's been a lot of preparation to get to this point, and there's been a lot of anxiety and a lot of milestones to hit,
02:49but so far we've hit them, and so everybody's feeling some really cautious optimism right now, but mostly excitement.
02:56We have ten payloads on this mission, nine of them are active instruments, they have powered data interfaces.
03:06We've been able to check all of those payloads out, we've powered them on, we've gotten them data back.
03:11The last two weeks of the mission is where we're there to make sure that the payloads are getting everything that they want to get out of this mission,
03:18so all the science data we can get them, we're going to get them.
03:20So for the systems chair, that means making sure that the lander is staying healthy enough from a power and thermal perspective
03:26to make sure we can stay powered on as long as we possibly can, and that our data budgets are healthy and we can get as much data down as we can.
03:33We'll be helping prioritize different conflicting operations and providing insight when anomalies occur, but that's our overall goal.
03:40We are operating for one lunar day on the surface, that's about 14 days.
03:46We are operating from sunrise to sunset.
03:49There's a lot of things that we have to monitor throughout the two weeks.
03:52As we get to lunar noon, a lot of things get really hot, so there are restrictions there on what can operate and what can't operate.
03:59So there's a lot that we're trying to fit in, but there's still some restrictions that we have to work around.
04:03And then, of course, on the other end, we plan to operate for several hours into the night.
04:09We will take some really interesting images of the sunset and then really operate as long as we can into the night.
04:15And then eventually things get really cold, so there's restrictions there as well.
04:19So we kind of have to work out our mission operations plan to maximize the amount of science we can bring down for that two weeks.
04:27It's been an amazing journey to be on console.
04:33My team and myself, we had our hands on every piece of the hardware from the assembly.
04:38We were there every step of the way for the testing, both here in California and in Florida.
04:43We watched it launch from the beach, and so to get to wrap it all up by being on console and see how well it's doing,
04:49through all the challenges and everything, it's just been really rewarding for me personally
04:53and gives me a great sense of pride for what I've been able to contribute and also what my team has done.
04:59For me, it feels really exciting to get there. This is what we've been working for.
05:04We've had a lot of those payload operations during transit, but the majority of those payload operations are going to be on the surface.
05:11So it's really going to be the payload's mission at that point.
05:14And at that point, we're going to make sure that we are able to support all of these payload mission objectives,
05:20and that's what I've been working for over the past four years.
05:23I am just looking forward to that, looking forward to just getting the work done
05:28and celebrating for a little bit when we have a successful touchdown,
05:31but just kind of getting heads down, making sure that we're not wasting any time,
05:35that we're using those two weeks and using them to the maximum that we can
05:41to get all of the data down that we can during that time.
