🇸🇪 SSC connects Firefly’s lunar journey with Moon to Earth communications
On 2 March, Firefly Aerospace’s historic Blue Ghost Mission-1 (BGM1) made a successful landing on the Moon. With SSC as a key partner, providing critical spacecraft tracking and communications throughout its journey there, as well as downlink of important data during its current researching on the Moon’s surface, this mission is already writing new space history.
Carrying 10 science and technology instruments to the lunar surface, the Blue Ghost lunar lander was launched on Wednesday, January 15, onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. During its approximately 45-day transit to the Moon, Blue Ghost shared some amazing imagery and live updates, downlinked via SSC’s terrestrial ground stations.
“This is an incredible milestone for lunar space travel and research – the first fully successful commercial soft landing on the Moon. We are proud to be the sole ground station communications provider for the Blue Ghost Mission 1 lunar lander. Ensuring a safe journey and landing, as well as delivering incredible data from their payload experiments to the scientific community is an honor for SSC,” says Nick Priborsky, President of the Connect division at SSC.
Blue Ghost traveled more than 2.8 million miles, downlinked more than 27 GB of data, and supported several payload science operations. This included signal tracking from the Global Navigation Satellite System at a record-breaking distance with the LuGRE payload, radiation tolerant computing through the Van Allen Belts with the RadPC payload, and measurements of magnetic field changes with the LMS payload.
Record-breaking data downlinks
Shortly after making the first-ever fully successful commercial soft landing on the Moon, another record was to be set. Later that same day, at 10 PM (UTC), SSC and Firefly made new history with the establishment of a 10 Mbps real-time communication link between the Blue Ghost Mission 1 lunar lander and SSC’s ground station on Hawaii – the highest data rates ever between Earth and the surface of the Moon.
“This groundbreaking achievement was a true collaborative effort between SSC’s and Firefly’s teams. Together, linking our ground station to the BGM1 transmitter, we have set a historic milestone that pushes the boundaries of space communications. We’re beyond proud,” says Nick Priborsky.
Follow the latest mission updates on fireflyspace.com/news/blue-ghost-mission-1-live-updates/
Two weeks of lunar research
Since landing, the BGM1 lander has actively been examining the lunar surface and conducted various experiments, scheduled to continue over the course of one moon day (14 earth days). The research will be downlinked via SSC’s terrestrial ground station network using SSC’s antennas and Firefly’s transmitters.
The 10 science and technology instruments onboard will help advance lunar research and conduct several first-of-its-kind demonstrations, including testing regolith sample collection, long-distance Global Navigation Satellite System capabilities, radiation-tolerant computing, and lunar dust mitigation.
Read more about the onboard payloads: fireflyspace.com/missions/blue-ghost-mission-1
The future is lunar
As the interest for lunar exploration continues to grow, SSC keeps developing and expanding its lunar ground station network. SSC was recently selected as service provider to NASA’s expanding Near Space Network (NSN) of commercial direct-to-Earth capabilities.
SSC is also a vital partner for some of the most talked-about lunar missions in preparation, including ispace’s M3 mission, Astrolab’s FLIP lunar rover, and India’s Chandrayaan missions which ultimately aim to put astronauts back on the Moon in the coming years.
“We have a long lunar heritage dating back to the early Apollo missions, and we look forward to delivering ground station services to exciting new missions,” ends Nick Priborsky.
Originally published on 10 March by SSC.
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