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Ephemeris: 04/03/2025 – Blue Ghost’s two week long cold night

April 3, 2025 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Thursday, April 3rd. Today the Sun will be up for 12 hours and 53 minutes, setting at 8:13, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:17. The Moon, 1 day before first quarter, will set at 3:23 tomorrow morning.

During the last lunar day the Blue Ghost Lander spend its time from little after sunrise until a little after sunset investigating the surface of the Moon at the lunar Sea of Crises or Mare Crisium. It wasn’t expected to survive the two-week-long night. It wasn’t expected to because it had no internal heating and at night the temperatures on the Moon can drop to down to minus 208° F, or a little bit more on the night side. During the day the temperature gets up to 250° which is pretty hot for some of the electronics. But what really kills a Lander is at night where they can’t recharge the batteries and the batteries drop in temperature to 200° below zero for two weeks. They generally do not survive.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT – 4 hours). Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

The last little bit of sunlight provided by the setting sun photographed by the Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Lander with the overexposed crescent Earth above, and Venus shining at a 1 o'clock position somewhat lower.
The last little bit of sunlight provided by the setting sun photographed by the Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Lander with the overexposed crescent Earth above, and Venus shining at a 1 o’clock position somewhat lower. The reason for these sunset and post sunset images is to find elusive dust suspended as the Moon’s “atmosphere” described by Eugene Cernan on the Apollo 17 mission. Credit: NASA/Firefly Aerospace via AP.
Categories: Ephemeris Program, Space exploration, The Moon Tags:

Ephemeris: 02/04/2025 – Two Moon landers currently en route

February 4, 2025 Comments off

This is Bob Moler with Ephemeris for Tuesday, February 4th. Today the Sun will be up for 9 hours and 58 minutes, setting at 5:56, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:56. The Moon, 1 day before first quarter, will set at 1:55 tomorrow morning.

On January 15th a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 2 missions, at one time, to land on the Moon They will arrive at the Moon months apart. The first to attempt to land is Firefly’s Blue Ghost Lander with a mission called Ghost Riders in the Sky. It is currently spending about a month in Earth orbit before heading out to the Moon, which will take four days and spend another two weeks orbiting the Moon before attempting to land in the small area called Mare Crisium, the Sea of Crises. The second Lander by the Japanese company ispace, called Resilience, will take a more circuitous route to the moon, flying by it later this month and then coming back to the Moon several months later to enter orbit and then finally land on Mare Frigoris, the Cold Sea. So the two missions will not be active on the Moon at the same time.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EST, UT – 5 hours). Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

What the Firefly Blue Ghost Lander might look like after it successfully lands on the Moon
What the Firefly Blue Ghost Lander might look like after it successfully lands on the Moon. Credit Firefly.
Milestones of the ispace Resilience mission
Milestones of the ispace Resilience mission. The path depicted here no way resembles the actual trajectory of the spacecraft. Credit ispace.
Categories: Commercial space mission, Ephemeris Program, Space exploration, Spacecraft, The Moon Tags: , ,