We're on the moon!' Private Blue Ghost moon lander aces historic lunar landing for NASA

[Admin]

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost spacecraft made history today (March 2), becoming just the second private vehicle ever to soft-land on the moon.

We're on the moon!' Private Blue Ghost moon lander aces historic lunar landing for NASA : Read more

 

[Joexo]

If it was 1975 I would've been more excited about this

 

[Joexo]

Still cool nonetheless

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Congrats to Firefly Aerospace.

Landing on the Moon is hard. Theirs is the first fully successful landing of a non-government space craft launched by a non-government launch provider.

I was particularly impressed by the statement that it landed on "a relatively flat, boulder-free stretch of lunar ground that Blue Ghost autonomously [emphasis added] selected as a safe landing spot." That is something we would not have been able to do in 1975. That is something that we will need for robotic missions to not just the Moon, but to Mars and wherever else we want to put instruments and even manufacturing facilities without risking human crews (or paying in payload for crew life support).

 

[RokkoRokko]

The image "A view of the Earth above the moon as seen by the Blue Ghost moon lander at Mare Crisium after landing. The probe's shadow is visible at center. (Image credit: Firefly Aerospace)" doesn't look right to me. is it fake???

I'm not a rabid conspiracy theorist so trying to explain what looks wrong to me before jumping to conclusions without all the facts of the image.

The first thing I saw was the horizon curvature was too prominent, suggesting the moon was only a few kilometers in diameter. Looked more like a shot taken from low orbit. Then I see there's a fish-eye effect on the lens from other images on the page. That explains that.

What I can't explain is that the lander shadow seems to reach way into the distance, like half a kilometer maybe] without the stretch effect shadows get . The shadow looks more like the sun is low on the horizon behind the lander projected onto the side of a large boulder. It looks as though the shado is projecting across 500 meters or so.

look at the angle of the craters as they recede into the distance - The shadow does not seem to match that at all.

Ok, more thought, assuming it is a real image, The lander shadow shows a small hill that it's sitting on - Did it land on a small hill ?

There is stretch in the shadow as I would expect, the rocket tube isn't that ling & the lander is box shaped mostly and the shadow shows a cone shape so stretch is definitely present.

The craters seem wrong, but maybe if the area of the background is only real small & the craters were only centimeters across - Maybe then that could work.

Perspective is a goofy thing.

Opinions from others on this?

 

[COLGeek]

What has been shared is legit. Nothing off here at all.