“You want to avoid it,” Cogan told ARS before the Blue Goast launch. “What you can do is that you can either get four tanks and have fuel and oxidizers at the angle angles, and then you are always focused, or you can live with two tanks, and you can stack them.”
A camera on the Blue Gastlander of the fireflies immediately on March 2 of the sunrise. Later, after touching the moon, it took a sight of its shadow. The earth is loom on the horizon.
Credit: Fire Fly AeroSpace
The blue ghost on the car has four landing legs absorbed in the legs, the bowl -shaped pads are able to bend if the land is down on a rock or slope.
“If we came at a little faster, we needed the Leg to be able to be able to, so we really experienced the legs on the ground.” “We basically filled them on a temporary weight bench at different angles and threw it to the ground, threw it into the concrete, thrown it regularly in fake rocks, rocks, at different angles so that the legs could.
He said, “This is really ridiculous, because one of the kinds we did not test is that if we come down very lightly, almost no no fast.” “And that was the case that the landler landed. I was joking with my structural engineer that he wasted all the time.”
Proven positive
The firefly, working under an agreement with NASA’s CLPS program, delivered the experience of science and technology demonstrations organized by NASA to the lunar level. The CLPS has built NASA’s commercial cargo and staff -based business, service -based business model for transportation to the International Space Station.
NASA officials knew that this approach was dangerous. The last landing on the moon by the US spacecraft was the last Apollo mission in 1972, and most of the companies involved in the CLP are under 20 years of age, with very little experience in deep space missions.
On his first attempt in January 2024, a company in Pittubutic failed to reach the moon. Next month, Houston -based intuitive machines landed on their Nova -C spacecraft, but helped him after being snatched in a touchdown moment.
There was a third company trying to land a firefly, a landing at Cedar Park in Texas. Originally established as a rocket developer, the firefly signed up for the CLPS provider and won a $ 101 million contract with NASA in 2021 to bring the government -fired science package to the moon. NASA devices riding in the Blue Gust Lander cost about $ 44 million.
Earlier this month, the successful landing of the Blue Goast of the Fire Fly was happy with the expectations of NASA’s CLPs. “Overall, this is an amazing, amazing evidence that the CLPS model works,” said Brad Bailey, Assistant Deputy Associate Administrator for Research in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
There are seven CLP missions on NASA’s deal. Launch can be launched with next August when Blue Origin plans to send his first Blue Moon Lander to the moon. NASA has two more blue ghost missions and intuitive machines with a firefly, along with two more landing efforts, as well as another flight and another flight from the Draper Laboratory.