With theBlue Ghost lunar foreign mission come to an endthis workweek , the spacecraft has gifted scientists and the public with an incredible send - off . The moonlight lander captured the first ever HD imagery of a sunset as catch from the moon , and the range have been sew together into a TV .
The stunning footage shows the sunlight go under over the synodic month ’s horizon ; an event which pass on the moon just one per month . A lunar sidereal day endure for two week , and the Blue Ghost used this clock time to do its experiments on the moonlight ’s surface and collect solar index from the Dominicus . Then the two - workweek - long lunar night begins and it is too dark for the spacecraft to garner power — but first , the lander got to observe one last sight of the sunshine background .
“ Lunar sunset imagery that was captured by Blue Ghost from different tv camera angles on March 16 , ” Firefly Aerospace wrote sharing the footage . “ These image , stitched together in a video , show a view glow that comes to life just above the Moon ’s surface as the sunshine goes down . Earth and Venus ( further in the length ) are also shown above the Moon . The NASA science team is excited to analyze these figure of speech further and share more on the findings soon . ”
The military mission landed on March 2 and officially total to an end on 6:15 p.m. CT on March 16 , with the spacecraft having redeem enough power to work for five hour into the lunar Nox and to collect data on the nighttime precondition there as well .
Other secret companies have had varying spirit level of achiever in their lunar missions , like Intuitive Machines which has complete soft landing on the moon twice but had both its landers fall over , or ispace which has go at one lunar landing place but has another landing try come up presently . But the Blue Ghost mission is noted for being successful in meeting all of its delegacy objectives on the first go , with landing place , surface operations , and lunar nighttime observation all achieve .
“ After a flawless Sun Myung Moon landing , the Firefly squad right away moved into aerofoil operations to ensure all 10 NASA load could capture as much skill as potential during the lunar day , ” said Jason Kim , CEO of Firefly Aerospace .
“ We ’re incredibly gallant of the presentment Blue Ghost enabled from chase GPS signal on the Moon for the first time to robotically drill and collecting science deeper into the lunar surface than ever before . We want to stretch a Brobdingnagian thank you to the NASA CLPS initiative and the White House brass for serving as the bedrock for this Firefly mission . It has been an honour to enable science and engineering science experiments that support future military mission to the moons , Mars , and beyond . ”
