Blue Ghost Lander Lowers Orbit, Prepares for Lunar Touchdown on March 2
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander has successfully completed an engine burn to lower its orbit around the Moon, as part of its preparations for a scheduled lunar landing. The lander, which entered lunar orbit last week after a four-day journey from Earth, has now been positioned at an altitude of 120 kilometers above the surface. This adjustment, lasting three minutes and 18 seconds, has placed the spacecraft in a stable orbit ahead of its final descent. Data is currently being received while the mission team monitors the probe’s positioning and upcoming maneuvers.
Orbital Adjustments and Communication Challenges
According to reports, the lander’s orbit will be further refined before its anticipated landing on March 2. A video released by Firefly Aerospace has shown a closer view of the Moon’s surface, with the company confirming that intermittent communication blackouts are expected as the spacecraft moves around the Moon’s far side. While the probe remains on the near side, data transmission is ongoing, and mission controllers are finalising plans for the next set of orbital maneuvers.
Launch and Mission Objectives
Blue Ghost was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission, part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, is designed to transport scientific experiments and technology demonstrations to the lunar surface. Ten payloads have been included in this mission, focusing on lunar surface studies and technological advancements to support future exploration.
Parallel Lunar Landing Efforts
The mission shared its launch with Japan-based ispace’s lander, Resilience, which follows a different trajectory towards the Moon. Unlike Blue Ghost, which is set to land in a matter of days, Resilience’s approach prioritises efficiency over speed and will take approximately 3.5 months to reach the lunar surface. Resilience carries a micro-rover named Tenacious and is attempting a soft landing after a previous unsuccessful attempt by the company.
Final Preparations for Lunar Surface Operations
If successful, Blue Ghost will become the second privately developed spacecraft to land on the Moon. Once on the surface, it will operate for approximately 14 Earth days, the duration of a full lunar day. During this period, scientific instruments will collect data, test components, and contribute to ongoing lunar research. As part of the Artemis program, these findings are expected to play a role in shaping future lunar exploration strategies.
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Two hikers accidentally discovered a treasure trove in Czech Republic . While taking a stroll in the forests surrounding Zvičina Hill in the Krkonoše Mountains near Poland’s border, they spotted an aluminium can and an iron box protruding slightly above the surface in a stone mound. The containers contained about 600 gold coins and a stunning assortment of gold artifacts. Discovery of this treasure worth more than $340,000 has drawn attention of researchers, arising questions about both the origin of the coins and how did they end up in such a remote location.
Tracing the origin of coins
According to the report by Vojtěch Brádle, a numismatist from the Museum of Eastern Bohemia, the majority of the coins were minted between 1808 and 1915. They originate from the Austria-Hungarian Empire, particularly under the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph I. Some of the coins feature countermarks minted in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenians after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The 598 coins cover a broad historical period, containing currency from France, Belgium, the Ottoman Empire, and Russia too. The range of provenances makes it difficult to track how the coins got to where they were, or just why they were stashed away at all. “It is hard to say whether it was Czech, German, or Jewish gold,” said Petr Grulich, director of the Museum of Eastern Bohemia, according to Dailymail.
Theories about the hiding place
There are several theories and speculation about how these coins and artifacts were hidden in such a remote location. One theory suggests that the items were concealed during Nazi Germany’s occupation of Czechoslovakia.
Following the Munich Agreement of 1938, large numbers of Jews and Czechs fled their homes in the annexed Sudetenland to escape persecution. Some historians believe that the treasure was buried during this time in an effort to protect it from the invading Nazi forces.
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On may 10th, a semitrailer delivered NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe or IMAP to the Astrotech space operations facility all the way from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The IMAP mission is a modern-day celestial cartographer that will map the solar system by studying the heliosphere, a giant bubble created by the Sun’s solar wind that surrounds our solar system and protects it from harmful interstellar radiation. Tentatively scheduled for launch no earlier than fall 2025 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA Kennedy, IMAP will be processed fuelled and encapsulated by the technicians in Astrotech facility.
About the mission
According to reported NASA’s blog, The IMAP mission will orbit the Sun at a location called Lagrange Point 1 (L1), which is about one million miles from Earth towards the Sun. From this location, IMAP can measure the local solar wind and scan the distant heliosphere without background from planets and their magnetic fields. The spacecraft will use 10 scientific instruments to study and map the heliosphere, a vast magnetic bubble surrounding the Sun protecting our solar system.
At NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, IMAP went through thermal vacuum testing at the X-ray and Cryogenic facility that simulates harsh conditions and dramatic temperature changes to simulate the environment during launch, on the journey toward the Sun.
Mission Management
IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes program portfolio. It is lead by Princeton University professor David J. McComas with an international team of 25 partner institutions. The spacecraft was built and operated from The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
Information from this mission are expected to provide early warnings about space weather, which can affect human space explorers and technological systems like satellites and power grids that can affect life on Earth.
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