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Blue Ghost Mission 1
Update: 2025-01-10
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NASA and Firefly Aerospace experts discuss the upcoming launch of Blue Ghost Mission 1, its lunar lander, and the science and technology being delivered to the Moon’s surface. HWHAP 367.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Houston, we have a podcast.
00:00:02
Welcome to the official podcast of NASA's Johnson Space Center, Episode 367, Blue Ghost Mission 1.
00:00:08
I'm Nilla Faramji, and I will be your host today.
00:00:11
On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts, all to let you know what's going on in the world of human spaceflight and more.
00:00:20
NASA bought a ride to the Moon to deliver robots as part of the Artemis campaign.
00:00:25
NASA is working with multiple U.S.
00:00:27
companies to deliver science experiments and technology demonstrations to the lunar service to improve our understanding of the Moon's environment, laying some of the groundwork for future crewed missions to the Moon,
00:00:38
and ultimately Mars.
00:00:40
The commercial lunar payload services known as Clips allows NASA to work with the innovative, entrepreneurial, commercial space industry to complete rapid, cost-effective flights to the Moon.
00:00:50
Since 2018, the Clips Initiative has been working to enable a lunar economy and support a long-term presence on the Moon for the benefit of all.
00:00:59
Schedules to launch soon is Fireflies Blue Ghost Mission 1, carrying 10 NASA science and technology payloads to the Moon's Earth-facing side.
00:01:07
Blue Ghost will mark the third flight and delivery to launch under Clips.
00:01:12
In early 2024, two Clips flights launched, with one successfully landing on the Moon, delivering science and technology.
00:01:20
At Head of Landing on the Moon, we have the Director of Spacecraft Mission Management from the Clips vendor Firefly Aerospace Faro Zubary, and the NASA Project Scientist for Clips Maria Banks to talk about this mission,
00:01:30
the lander, and of course, the science and tech being delivered.
00:01:34
With that, we bring you Blue Ghost Mission 1.
00:01:37
Let's get started.
00:01:38
[Music]
00:01:59
Maria, Farah, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast.
00:02:03
Thanks for having us.
00:02:04
Thanks for having us.
00:02:06
I wanted our listeners to understand your unique backgrounds and how they brought you to this lunar delivery today.
00:02:11
So in a few words, can you share a little bit about your background and what led you into your role?
00:02:17
Let's start with Farah.
00:02:19
So my passion for space really started as a young kid.
00:02:24
It led me to pursue aerospace engineering, and then I worked on various aerospace products.
00:02:31
But most of my time was spent in the space industry on spacecraft, primarily as a spacecraft vehicle engineer.
00:02:38
And then a bit of a time as a mechanical engineer on the James Webb Space Telescope as well.
00:02:42
And I was really at bigger aerospace corporations for about 10 years and really wanted to make a change and kind of join a aerospace startup to make a bigger impact in the space exploration world.
00:02:57
So I started at Firefly about two months after the Clips 19D mission was awarded in early 2021 as a payload integration manager.
00:03:06
We've been working with the payload teams who developed the science experiments that were taking on our lander to the moon.
00:03:14
And then now I lead a small team of payload managers and our primary focus is to ensure the customer requirements and mission objectives are met for our spacecraft missions.
00:03:23
So you really know this mission like the back of the net.
00:03:27
Yeah.
00:03:27
I've been here since day one, been working on it since since the beginning.
00:03:29
That's pretty amazing.
00:03:31
Yeah.
00:03:32
Well, I actually started in a slightly different direction.
00:03:38
I'm also a musician.
00:03:39
So I play the harp, actually.
00:03:41
Very cool.
00:03:42
And but I always wanted to do both music and science at the same time.
00:03:46
So I started with the harp and went to school and got a bachelor fine arts and traveled around the world, doing tours and playing different things.
00:03:57
And then I used my music to basically support myself while I went back to school and got a degree in science.
00:04:05
So my degree in science is in geology and planetary science.
00:04:11
And I have a PhD from the University of Arizona.
00:04:14
And of course, I always wanted to, I was wanted to do both as I said as a child.
00:04:20
And I really wanted to be an astronaut.
00:04:23
But if I can't be an astronaut and work walk on the surfaces of other planets, at least I can sense spacecraft there and see it through through a camera lens or through the different instruments on the lander.
00:04:35
So I'm really enjoying that.
00:04:37
I love working on different NASA missions and I work at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
00:04:43
And I just felt to be a part of clips and able to sense something to the surface of the moon.
00:04:49
It's just a dream come true.
00:04:51
It's really exciting.
00:04:52
These rapid lunar deliveries are really something else, especially with small American companies that are kind of leading the charge.
00:04:58
Maria, while we still have you, we've had clips making appearance on the podcast previously, but for those who don't really know, can you tell us what clips is it's CLPS so it sounds a little bit different,
00:05:10
but what's clips?
00:05:12
So clips clips is an acronym that stands for commercial lunar payload services.
00:05:17
It's a NASA's initiative, but it's really just a fancy way to say that NASA is buying itself a one way ride to the moon.
00:05:24
Think of the lander as almost like a bus and we're NASA's buying tickets to put our instruments on the bus or on the lander.
00:05:32
And so Fireflies building us this lander, they're going to take us to the moon.
00:05:36
And that's a it's a new way for us to advance our capabilities for science and explosion while also helping develop commercial development of the moon.
00:05:46
That's awesome.
00:05:47
So clips deliveries are part of the broader Artemis campaign as we prepare to send astronauts to the moon in over 50 years.
00:05:56
So can you tell us a little bit about how clips ties itself to the broader Artemis campaign?
00:06:02
Well, we have 10 different instruments on board and they are both technology demonstrations as well as science instruments.
00:06:12
And so all of them have different either technology or science objectives that are going to tell us something really important that we can use for Artemis.
00:06:18
Fill important knowledge gaps, things like dust, dust is a big problem.
00:06:22
There's a lot of really fine dust on the moon that can get into different instruments and on spacesuits.
00:06:28
And so we have several instruments actually on this lander that are trying to tell us a little bit more about that and all of this information will help us to better prepare for our humans return to the moon.
00:06:40
That's that's perfect.
00:06:41
So we're buying a complete robotic lunar delivery service.
00:06:46
Sounds right.
00:06:46
That sounds right.
00:06:48
Amazing.
00:06:48
So I'm going to ask you a couple of questions down.
00:06:51
This is Fireflies first mission to the moon.
00:06:53
Can you tell us how you've prepared for this and what are some of the milestones that you're working through as you prepare for this lunar delivery?
00:07:02
So we've been preparing over the last over three and a half years for this mission throughout several different phases.
00:07:09
So first we had our design phase where we identified all of the customer and system requirements for the mission and work with subsystem experts at the company to just make sure that the intent of the requirements are being met in our blue ghost landed design.
00:07:24
And then we went through extensive test campaigns where we qualify the structure of the lander to ensure that it meets the harsh launch environments while also doing subsystem and component testing to ensure that they can withstand the space environments as well as the launch and landing events.
00:07:42
So we have several different tests to ensure that our lander design is going to meet its objectives.
00:07:50
One example of the set system tests is our landing gear drop tests where we completed nearly 100 landing gear drop tests on lunar simulate and even concrete to simulate the worst case landing event to make sure that our lander is able to withstand the high shock from the landing.
00:08:10
So the the drop test included drops from different high different angles to simulate the full range of possibilities that we can predict by our algorithms.
00:08:21
Another example of subsystem tests was our hazard avoidance testing so we have about an acre of moonscape at our rocket range in Texas about 45 minutes from here.
00:08:33
And we tested our terrain relative navigation and hazard avoidance system there on a drone so that we could get some hardware in the loop testing along with our thousands of software simulations that we've done to ensure that our system can identify the safest landing site on the moon in those final moments of descent.
00:08:55
Not complex at all.
00:09:07
So blue ghost has gone through several tests that have prepared it for its upcoming flight so tell us about the linear itself first let's start with the name of the linear.
00:09:12
Yeah so blue ghost is actually named after a firefly species that found in the southeast region of the United States that's known for a distinctive blue glow so as fireflies of course we had to.
00:09:24
We've really liked this name and we're really proud of it and then our mission name goes writers in the sky further displays into that blue ghost theme.
00:09:32
It's such to be one of the first commercial landers on the moon and so blue ghost is essentially forging a highway to the lunar surface that's kind of the theme of this mission we're enabling regular access to the moon for ourselves for future missions and as well as for other commercial and government customers.
00:09:51
Tell us a little bit about the design or size of the land or how much does it weigh what can people picture when they're thinking about blue ghost.
00:10:00
So the blue ghost lander itself is about two meters tall which is about six and a half feet and about three and a half meters wide which is 11 11 and a half feet.
00:10:13
And so it's wider than it is tall it's designed with that low center of mass on a wider footprint to help us land upright.
00:10:21
It also weighs about 1,500 kilograms which is about 3,300 pounds after it's all loaded up with fuel and ready to launch.
00:10:33
And that's about the weight of a small car and then there are 10 cameras on the lander and what's really cool about the size is some of the cameras are going to be at human height.
00:10:48
So you'll kind of when you get when we get these images that are looking at the horizon of the moon it'll kind of feel like you're standing on the moon and it would be the field of view that you would have as you're standing on the moon when you're looking at these images,
00:11:04
which is really, which is really cool.
00:11:07
And then as far as the design, we make a lot of the core components in house, including the structure, the composite panels, the legs,
00:11:17
the foot pads, the avionics as well and the batteries and the thrusters, they are built with a lot of the same proven technologies that are common to fireflies launch vehicles as well and orbital vehicles to help enable lower costs for us and also increase the reliability there.
00:11:36
The lander itself is really designed for the payloads it's to make sure that we are able to fulfill all of those 10 payload mission objectives on and in transit to the moon.
00:11:50
That's perfect.
00:11:52
So that's a great high level overview on what we're expecting on this mission and what we can expect from Blue Ghost.
00:11:57
Maria, let's go back to you for a second.
00:12:00
I wanted to ask you what you hope to learn from the NASA payloads that are flying aboard this flight.
00:12:08
Oh, goodness.
00:12:09
I think we're going to learn a lot and I'm really excited about it.
00:12:13
I'm really hoping to learn about how our new technologies that we're testing, how those perform in space as well as the surface of the moon.
00:12:22
Of course, I'm really exciting new science about the moon.
00:12:26
I mentioned that we had some instruments that are taking a look at the dust, but all of that material on the surface of the moon will call it collectively a regolith.
00:12:37
We have a lot of instruments taking a look at that.
00:12:42
Not only how that dust may stick to different materials, but we also have a technology demonstration that's testing how we sample.
00:12:51
We sample that regolith and get samples autonomously, robotically on that surface.
00:12:57
We have cameras that are going to see how that dust interacts with the surface as we descend down to the surface and using electric dynamic fields and cool things to see if they can mitigate dust sticking to things.
00:13:11
We're trying to learn a lot about the lunar interior, so we have some instruments that are looking at even a drill that's going to drill below the surface and measure the heat flow.
00:13:24
Lots of really cool things.
00:13:26
I've just mentioned a couple right there.
00:13:29
Those are some really, really cool things and I think that as we talk through this mission, I wanted to take a little bit of a closer look at blue ghost mission one itself.
00:13:39
Let's talk a little bit about the mission overview and then get to I want to learn about the landing site too.
00:13:43
Let's talk about launching landing.
00:13:46
When is it we are scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in mid-January from the launch pad 39A in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
00:13:57
It's kind of an exciting thing to be based on launch pad 39 launch complex 39A just because that's where several of the Apollo missions have been launched from.
00:14:07
So kind of a fun fact there and then we'll land on the surface of the moon about 45 days later.
00:14:13
So 45 days to get to the moon, how long will the actual mission on the surface last and are there any milestones or checkouts that you're most looking forward to while in transit.
00:14:26
So we have a few payload checkouts in transit and then we the majority of our payload science objectives are met on the lunar surface.
00:14:37
The mission on the lunar surface is about 14 days.
00:14:41
It's one lunar day.
00:14:43
So that's really what we've we've designed the vehicle to make sure that we have power for that full lunar day.
00:14:53
So we've got the three solar panels, you know, so we can use solar illumination from the sunrise to the sunset, maximizing our capability on the lunar surface.
00:15:04
So that's it's about two weeks of operations on lunar surface.
00:15:07
So we have science operations taking place, but we also have a really cool landing site Maria.
00:15:12
Tell us a little bit about where this lunar delivery will land and why this site was selected.
00:15:17
So we did have two other clips deliveries that launched earlier in 2024.
00:15:24
And for those particular deliveries, the company that made the lander, they had the honor of choosing those landing sites.
00:15:33
All of the instruments were pretty landing site agnostic.
00:15:36
However, for Blue Ghost Mission 1, we have a couple instruments that do need to land in a more specific environment.
00:15:46
For example, we have an instrument called LMS and they need to avoid what we call a magnetic anomalies.
00:15:53
And they needed some simple geology.
00:15:55
We also needed to go with there weren't many rocks because we do have a drill called Lister.
00:16:01
And so it became NASA's responsibility to choose the landing site.
00:16:05
And so that was a really wonderful experience myself as the project scientist and working with the other instrument teams to understand what they needed scientifically to choose a really good landing site.
00:16:20
So we settled on Mari Chrissium, which checked all the boxes for our scientific needs.
00:16:25
It's a Mari Basin.
00:16:27
So when you look at the moon, you'll see that much of the moon is really bright, like kind of a bright gray.
00:16:33
And then there's splotches or round spots that are a little bit darker.
00:16:38
So that's what we call Mari Material.
00:16:40
So this is one of those Mari Basins, one of those big round spots of darker gray material.
00:16:46
And they look a different color because they have a different texture, they're much smoother.
00:16:51
So they make really great landing sites too.
00:16:54
And so we had to take into account, of course, some of the requirements of the lander.
00:16:58
So we wanted something that had very shallow slopes, less than five degrees.
00:17:02
We wanted, as I said, we wanted to be really smooth.
00:17:06
And we wanted to have very few hazards, so no really big rocks.
00:17:10
That's bad for a drill, but it's also bad for a lander.
00:17:13
And we wanted to avoid really large impact craters, things that hit the surface of the moon and make big holes in the surface.
00:17:23
We want to avoid those as much as we can.
00:17:25
They are everywhere, but we want to avoid the big ones that are really steep and really deep.
00:17:31
So we took a look at all of those different things.
00:17:34
And then we chose this landing site that's just north of this really cool ancient volcanic feature, which actually has now been named Mons Latrell Volcano.
00:17:45
So that's named after Pierre Andre Latrell, who is an entomologist from the late 18th century.
00:17:52
And he named dozens of insects, including fireflies.
00:17:56
And I've heard there's an affinity here at Firefly where the fireflies are calling it Mount Firefly.
00:18:03
Is that right Farah?
00:18:05
I can't say or deny that.
00:18:09
Yeah, we were really proud of that name too, and we're happy to see that come through.
00:18:14
There's so many really cool connections.
00:18:16
Maria, thank you so much for describing the landing site.
00:18:18
I can picture it as you walked us through it.
00:18:20
So those interesting geologic features and the note where the components that you mentioned as far as mission objectives go were really helpful for me to understand.
00:18:30
I would love to add something else to go ahead.
00:18:33
So as Farah was mentioning earlier, we're going to be landing early in the lunar day.
00:18:40
And so that was one of the fun things that we had to do in searching the landing site was to make perspective views.
00:18:46
So we put ourself at about two meters or six feet above the surface and rendered what that surface would look like using our different imaging that we have in digital train models that can help you see it in three dimensions.
00:18:59
So we put ourself on the surface and looked around to make sure there were no mountains or other features sticking up that might block that sun and put us in a shadow.
00:19:08
And then also we're hoping to get some really great images as the sun sets.
00:19:13
So we wanted to look to the west too and make sure we didn't have any obstructions there so we can hopefully get a really great sunset view at the end of the day.
00:19:22
We're going to talk a little bit about the sunset later.
00:19:24
So I'm excited about that.
00:19:25
Farah, I have a couple questions for you on the landing and descent profile.
00:19:30
Can you describe that to us a little bit and what we'll see kind of during and after.
00:19:35
Sure.
00:19:35
So there are a few key milestones that happen during descent.
00:19:41
So we go into a descent orbit in session.
00:19:45
That's approximately an hour before touching down on the surface.
00:19:50
We perform this DOI burn to initiate the descent sequence and place the vehicle on its descent trajectory and then we have a coast for approximately 51 minutes where we have all engines off.
00:20:03
And we use our vision based terrain relative navigation or vision navigation system as I mentioned before that was tested on the moon scape here at rocket ranch.
00:20:15
We use that system during that coast phase to measure the vehicle's position and then we go into a disoosa guidance.
00:20:24
It is an automated descent sequence that begins this guidance phase which is approximately 12 minutes before we land.
00:20:31
And then we do our power descent initiation.
00:20:35
So we use our engines to reduce the orbital velocity down to 40 meters per second.
00:20:43
So to really slow down above the target landing site that's selected by that vision navigation hazard avoidance system.
00:20:52
And we do our terminal guidance.
00:20:55
So that's approximately 100 seconds before we land.
00:21:01
We use we shut off our main engine.
00:21:04
Our RCS stressors will continue to pulse as needed to control that descent to make sure that we are landing in a good orientation.
00:21:14
And so that reduces our descent rate to about one meter per second.
00:21:17
And then our vision navigation system further tracks crater slopes to automatically select a hazard free site within the landing zone that was identified by NASA.
00:21:28
So then we will touch down on to the lunar surface will use our shock absorbing legs to stabilize the lander as it touches down and then their contact sensors on the foot pads to signal engine shutdown.
00:21:41
And that's only we will know that we have nominally landed.
00:21:46
And then after that we are doing some checkouts to make sure our lander is healthy.
00:21:52
We do take a picture and we expect to have our first image within about 30 minutes of nominal landing.
00:21:59
We'll use our span antennas for that.
00:22:01
Then we will calibrate our expand antenna.
00:22:05
So we'll have a much better data rate.
00:22:07
Once we calibrate that and that'll allow us to downlink HD imagery and video at a much faster data rate.
00:22:13
So we'll get much more images and hopefully video of the descent as well.
00:22:19
I cannot wait to see all of that sounds like there's a lot of work ahead still all the way through the end emissions.
00:22:26
So just really looking forward to see what we learn from this delivery.
00:22:31
And we actually just did a landing simulation.
00:22:35
So just this morning we kind of tested out what that would look like using the same the same span and expand capabilities from our comp system of what we'll expect that landing to see how fast we'll get the first image.
00:22:51
I know everyone will be very excited to get that first image after we touch down.
00:22:54
So we're testing out we've been testing out the procedures.
00:22:58
We're doing a lot of mission simulations right now where everyone's on console.
00:23:03
We're pretending as if this is the mission and we're connecting it to a lander simulator to test a lot of the components and all of the procedures as we go through descent.
00:23:15
We're doing different simulations to simulate our descent.
00:23:20
And we've been testing that out and so we found that it takes approximately 30 minutes to get that first image.
00:23:26
We're hoping to be much faster, but I know everyone will be on the edge of their seats for that first image back down.
00:23:34
So practice makes perfect and fix or it didn't happen is what I'm hearing from you right now.
00:23:40
Do you have a plan for what that first image is like which camera which direction didn't if it's pointed to the southeast.
00:23:49
We might get a great view of that volcano speaking as a geologist.
00:23:53
We'll be taking images throughout descent.
00:23:56
So we're going to have a lot of images stored on our cameras on board.
00:24:00
I believe the plan for that first image though will be a downward facing camera.
00:24:05
So we'll be able to see the lunar surface kind of where where we land.
00:24:11
It'll be.
00:24:12
Just before you land like the one that is looking down the solar panel down to the surface.
00:24:17
So you'll get to see a little bit of the lander along with the lunar surface in that first image.
00:24:22
But we'll have cameras.
00:24:23
We have about 360 degree view using all 10 cameras on the lander.
00:24:30
So we'll have images from each camera as we go through descent and definitely after landing as well.
00:24:36
So we'll just downlink them when we have higher data rate after we've calibrated our expand antenna.
00:24:42
Landing on the linear surface is really difficult.
00:24:45
There are a lot of things that have to go nominally to make this happen.
00:24:50
That includes the propulsion system.
00:24:53
That includes the vision navigation system there.
00:24:56
We run an extensive test campaign to make sure that all of these components and subsystems are going to operate nominally but there are a lot of things that have to go right in the right order and a lot you can't actually test until you're in the mission.
00:25:11
And you're using all of the actual flight components.
00:25:14
So if all goes nominally and everything works the way that we plan for then we'll have that first image within about 30 minutes after descent getting goosebumps at so exciting.
00:25:28
This is a large delivery for NASA.
00:25:30
There are 10 science and technology instruments.
00:25:34
I look at Maria right now and I'm saying, Lexi, Rad, PC, Lister, what are these things?
00:25:40
Tell us about the payloads Maria.
00:25:41
Oh sure.
00:25:42
I'd love to.
00:25:43
Yes, this is for our clips deliveries.
00:25:46
This is the largest number of instruments that we've flown on one of our landers so far.
00:25:53
And each of these instruments were selected individually.
00:25:57
So they weren't necessarily chosen to work together.
00:26:00
But these are fabulous teams.
00:26:03
They're all amazing scientists and they are actually working really well.
00:26:08
You know, they work really great together as a team.
00:26:10
Everybody's helping each other and it's just fabulous to work with all of them.
00:26:15
So here, let me tell you a little bit about each of the instruments.
00:26:19
So we have the NGLR, which is the next generation lunar retro reflector.
00:26:26
So this is a large retro reflector.
00:26:28
And as it sounds, it's the next generation based off of the retro reflectors that were flown in Apollo input on the lunar surface.
00:26:37
So a lot of the clips landers are flying small retro reflectors that are meant to be ranged to by lasers from orbiting spacecraft.
00:26:46
This one's bigger and it's meant to be ranged to from lasers on Earth, much like lasers have ranged to the Apollo retro reflectors.
00:26:56
And so this is really neat, this NGLR along with the smaller, they call them LRAs, the smaller retro reflectors that other clips landers are flying all together.
00:27:07
They are going to create these lunar judicial markers all around the surface of the moon that we can range to from our other orbiting spacecraft off into the future for decades into the future.
00:27:21
So really important, exciting instrument and something we can relate to, because we can actually shine our lasers on it from the Earth and see that that light reflected back,
00:27:32
which is really exciting.
00:27:34
So I've mentioned this one a couple times, the regolith adherence characterization, or that's the acronym RAC.
00:27:40
And so this is one of our regolith instruments.
00:27:46
So they're testing how that dust adheres to different materials that they have on the instrument.
00:27:53
We have the electric dynamic dust shield, which is called EDS.
00:27:57
And so that's also looking at dust and dust mitigation using electric dynamic fields.
00:28:04
I've mentioned the drill part of our landing site was we wanted to make sure that we didn't have many rocks on the surface as well as below the surface.
00:28:12
And that's because we have this drill.
00:28:14
It's called Lister, which stands for the lunar instrumentation of subsurface thermal exploration with rapidity.
00:28:22
And this drill is going to drill into the surface up to about three meters.
00:28:28
So that's up to about nine feet.
00:28:30
So really excited to see that and work with the team to make that happen.
00:28:34
And they are investigating the heat flow of the lunar interior.
00:28:38
So they're going to be taking temperature measurements on the way down.
00:28:42
So we also have the stereo cameras for lunar plume the surface studies.
00:28:47
That's an acronym that spells skelps.
00:28:50
And so these are several cameras on the lander.
00:28:53
They're going to be facing down towards the surface and show time for this camera is mostly on the descent down to the surface.
00:29:02
What they want to do is study those plume surface interactions.
00:29:05
So they want to see how the thrusters from the lander is interacting with the materials that regulate and that dust on the surface.
00:29:12
They want to see how that happens and they'll be taking stereo images and being able to look at that in great detail.
00:29:18
It's a variation on this instrument that's flown on Mars, actually, in some of our Mars landers.
00:29:24
We also have the Lexi instrument.
00:29:26
So that's the lunar environment heliospheric x-ray imager.
00:29:30
So they are acquiring x-ray images of Earth's magnetosphere.
00:29:35
We also have LMS, the lunar magnetoloric sounder.
00:29:38
So they are constraining temperature structure and thermal evolution.
00:29:44
They're trying to understand and study that crystal electric and magnetic fields.
00:29:50
For some of our technology instruments, we have a radiation tolerant computer system, also called red PC.
00:29:58
So just like it sounds as a computer system that's trying to understand the radiation environment on the moon and how that radiation environment impacts that computer system.
00:30:08
Again, testing our technologies for longer period durations on the surface and making sure we have computers that can hold up in that radiation environment.
00:30:17
And really interesting instrument is Lugra.
00:30:20
So that's the lunar GNSS receiver experiment.
00:30:24
So they are investigating the first use of GNSS that's global navigation satellite system in transit to the moon and then on the lunar surface.
00:30:35
We're going to be rotating the lander and facing it towards the Earth to try to receive those GNSS signals all the way to the moon.
00:30:45
I'm not going to continue to sleep, but intermittently on the way to the moon and then on the lunar surface.
00:30:51
And last but not least, we have a lunar planet back.
00:30:54
I love that name.
00:30:55
We call it LPV and that is testing regular sampling, sampling technologies.
00:31:02
So lots of science and all I'm picturing as you talk, by the way, great job in naming all 10 of those payloads.
00:31:10
But all I'm picturing as you talk are these 10 different things trying to work together to achieve different goals.
00:31:16
So how do all of the payloads work together on Blue Ghost?
00:31:21
Is it do they all operate at the same time?
00:31:23
How does how does that schedule look?
00:31:25
Well, it's all about and this is I'm looking at fair.
00:31:29
Talk to it a little bit.
00:31:31
Yeah.
00:31:31
Somebody earlier somebody said kind of explained it as a Swiss Army knife.
00:31:35
There's going to be so many things happening after we land on the moon.
00:31:38
So there are several different deployments.
00:31:40
As Maria mentioned, there are several several payloads that are interacting with the lunar surface.
00:31:48
So we have the lunar planet back, which is on a surface access arm that deploys to the surface.
00:31:54
And then we have another payload that's on that so that our EDS payload that deploys down as well to collect dust on top of it to see if their mitigation technologies will deflect that dust.
00:32:06
And then we have our listed payload, which does the drilling operation and then we have several different deployments so the LMS has a mass that's on top of the vehicle that deploys upwards and then four probes.
00:32:20
Yeah, electrodes that deploy outwards one in each direction of the vehicle.
00:32:26
And then we have a door that deploys from Lexi so that X ray imager that telescope that's on the top on a gimbal.
00:32:34
It is on a gimbal.
00:32:36
And so, of course, we have a gimbal deployments, but we also deploy that door so that it it's optics are that door that's there to prevent any damage to the objects prior to its pointing the position that it wants to look at.
00:32:53
So there are several different deployments are several different things that are you know with rack they have those wheels are turning to make sure that they're each getting imaged and exposed to the dust environments.
00:33:07
There are a lot of different movements that are going to be happening so it's hard to visualize when you can't actually see this on the moon, there's not a camera looking at the lander after it's on the moon.
00:33:19
It's really cool to see now while we have the lander here in Austin and we're doing a lot of the functional tests were able to we can't do all of the deployments, of course, we can't do everything as as we would on the the surface to protect the payloads,
00:33:32
but they're it's really cool to see the movement of everything as we're running through those functional tests to make sure that things are going really well, but because we have 10 payloads,
00:33:44
there's a lot of interactions that we have to consider when we're planning our operations, so we have a payload operations plan where we define all of the requirements for their mission and schedule those whenever there's availability we have to look at power we have to look at data we have to look at what they're actually doing there are some that don't want to operate when there's dust being thrown up so when there's a drilling operation or the sampling operation,
00:34:14
there are some payloads that can't really don't want to work during those times because it'll impact their science when they're doing imaging or something like that, so they're all collecting different science as we mentioned,
00:34:28
they're all they're all very unique, they're all they all have their different science objectives are not necessarily working together as far as collecting science goes, but they all are working together on the lander and we have to fit all their missions in,
00:34:41
so we have to look at all of the payloads and their operations plan and kind of schedule them.
00:34:46
So it's an intense project management plan with a lot of moving parts.
00:34:59
Yeah, I like to think of it a bit as a puzzle actually very you described that really really well, but as Farrah was saying, you know, we have to take into account, you know, the limited resources of the lander right we only have so much power there collecting data then we have to get that data back to the earth right and we have limited bandwidth to do that with and some of the payloads as Sarah was mentioning need to operate at different times.
00:35:15
Some need to operate as quickly as possible when we get on the surface some of those cameras like scouts they want to again understand that dust environment before literally the dust settles and and some of them have thermal concerns right as you think of the moon maybe as a cold place but it doesn't have an atmosphere to dissipate that sunlight that it gets so as we get to lunar noon it gets warm or warmer and warmer and so these instruments it'll get to warm for them to actually operate so we have to pay attention to all those factors and plug all the pieces into the puzzle at the right times so that everyone can operate and get all of their science based on the different times that they need to operate.
00:35:56
So all of these pieces of the puzzle working together and operating so each payload has its own operation center will have firefly with its broader mission control if you will with their mission operation center will be looking at the mission objectives overall.
00:36:13
But then each of the ten NASA payloads has its own little operating set up so can you talk to us a little bit about that Maria.
00:36:21
Yeah absolutely so each of our of our teams will be operating remotely except for one that will be here on center but they all have access to our voice loops right so when you're on console you can you can speak to each other and so they're working directly with firefly with their payload coordinator they're working with me the project scientist and we have it's there so many instruments we kind of got all hands on deck right so we have our integration manager on the NASA side and others that are there all on the voice loops we can all work together to make sure these operations run as smoothly as possible and so the different payload teams are going to be at their home institutions and they've all set up their own operation centers with their computers and all of the software that they need.
00:37:10
And they have access to the voice loop so they can talk with us as if they're right here with us so cool.
00:37:16
I love I love the fact that NASA's working with commercial industry to achieve this and firefighters first lunar delivery so very very exciting.
00:37:28
Do either one of you see or could either one of you describe some of the challenges and considerations for landing or operating on the moon.
00:37:36
Sure there's lots of challenges to consider while we're operating on the moon we mentioned the thermal environment the the temperatures changing throughout the lunar day getting warmer and then back colder again as we get closer to the sun setting and so different instruments function differently at those changing temperatures so we need to take that into consideration.
00:37:59
You know also communications for example maybe a will land at an orientation that we didn't expect and so we won't have maybe the power the exact power that we were hoping to get not fair I'm not saying that that'll happen of course we've tried to design the system to to make sure that even if we're at a slope we'll be able to maximize those capabilities from our solar panels and our batteries and then our.
00:38:28
High gain antennas on a gimbal so we'll be able to calibrate that but those are the challenges you have to head to think about which is really great that you planned ahead for those that's great but then also you know just even communicating back with earth.
00:38:41
What's happening on earth that might affect the ground station that you're communicating with be it high winds or weather these are all kinds of challenges that you just plan for and you see what happens and.
00:38:55
There's also a challenges with the payloads working together so some of the payloads are trying to mitigate dust or see how dust sticks to their different surfaces and other ones like lunar planet back and Lister they're doing activities on the surface that are going to kick that dust up right so some of those are challenges to to think about like how do we coordinate those different.
00:39:20
Teams and when they operate their different instruments so that they're not affecting the science results that maybe another instrument might get.
00:39:29
Yeah and going to your point about communication so all of the blue ghost data we're working with our communicate our ground station network so we're working with the ground station network that we've contracted so all that payload data and all the land or data release traveling back to earth you through the landers communication system so once it arrives back to the ground station.
00:39:53
It sent to our mission operation center here in Texas and then distributed to those respective payload team so we've gone through a lot of tests on what the latency might look like if the payload needs to react to something that what maybe there's a temperature measurement or.
00:40:08
There's something that they find an anomaly with we need to make sure that we practice all of those things that on the ground so we practice what that latency might look like and what the actions might look like so.
00:40:20
As we're preparing anomaly responses we're getting to practice those in our mission operations simulations that we're going through right now.
00:40:30
And what is that latency in a the best case scenario let's say the best case scenario seconds that's what we're hoping to achieve you know we have a requirement for several minutes but we are hoping to to get much under that and have that payload data delivered you know to us and then directly to the payload services so using their remote consoles and then of course because they're using remote consoles they're using Wi-Fi as well so.
00:40:58
Well, so we need to make sure that we've got connections there but we've practiced that multiple times we have those remote payload centers to ensure that there are any laggy issues i keep saying this but practice makes perfect seems to be the theme of preparing for blue ghost mission one.
00:41:16
Absolutely absolutely we've talked a little bit about the payloads we've talked about what the science schools are how the lander works how the lander was developed so really I think the question that I have for both of you guys is.
00:41:27
Why is it important to explore the moon.
00:41:33
I mean I feel like there's so many reasons as personally as as I mentioned i'm very passionate about space exploration and I have the personal goals of why this is so important and so exciting I think a lot of people can relate to that there's a increasing interest in space exploration and this is enabling that pathway to the moon and other deep space missions so the technology demonstrations that are being.
00:42:08
Operated on this blue ghost lander are going to be that that data is going to be used to improve upon future landers and in future.
00:42:20
Robotic instruments that will be included in future spacecraft in support of the Artemis campaign so.
00:42:28
As we continue to explore the moon we expect to uncover other critical data and resources that will provide lasting benefits to life on earth.
00:42:37
That's really well said Farah yes we don't always know what we don't know right you don't know what you don't know and so that's what explorations all about the moon we can think of it almost as a time capsule I suppose.
00:42:52
We can learn a lot from the moon that will tell us a lot about our own earth and we can learn things that can help us understand our own planet and understand different ways we can live on our planet.
00:43:06
And basically improve our life and and Farah was mentioning the technologies to so much of our technologies that we've tested for the space program have been able to to be used to improve our quality of life here on earth.
00:43:22
So besides just learning about the moon and exploring and preparing to send humans back to the moon we're also going to learn a lot of things that help us understand our own world.
00:43:35
And we'll impact our own lives there are one last question to close us out what's next for firefly.
00:43:42
So on the spacecraft side where we're just getting started we have we are dedicated to flying annual missions to the moon with payload services customized to our lander technology and.
00:43:55
Based off of the mission exploration goals for each customer so we have our blue ghost mission to and we've already completed the critical design review for that that includes operations in lunar orbit and on the far side of the moon which will be.
00:44:10
Mission that I'll be going in 2026 so that'll be that'll utilize our blue ghost landers stacked on our electric dark orbital vehicle which will stay in lunar orbit and so we're really excited about that mission and we really want to keep going we are.
00:44:28
Planning on flying a no missions to the moon our goals and ultimately unlock the moon by enabling that regular sustainable access.
00:44:37
That is really cool and orbital drop off and then landing on the far side of the moon looking forward to it.
00:44:43
In addition to this flight there's another clips flight actually scheduled to launch in the beginning of 2025 and there's additional clips of deliveries that are planned through actually 2028 at a cadence of roughly two per year.
00:44:58
So there's a lot of landers headed towards the moon coming up really soon which is really exciting and we'll be doing another call for proposals for instruments proposal program called prism which stands for payloads and research investigations on the surface of the moon so more instruments and instrument suites will be chosen and.
00:45:20
Really exciting feature with a lot of new things happening on the lunar surface.
00:45:26
Thanks so much Maria lots of science lots of tech and we are really excited for multiple lunar deliveries with clips.
00:45:33
Vera Maria thank you so much for being here we really appreciate you go blue ghost mission one go clips and go fire flight to the moon to the moon.
00:45:43
Thanks for listening today I hope you had a chance to learn something more about this lunar delivery as well as clips and firefly.
00:46:08
Check out NASA dot gov slash clips for the latest you can also go to NASA dot gov slash podcasts to get caught up on all of NASA's podcasts on social media you can find NASA Johnson on Facebook X and Instagram.
00:46:22
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00:46:30
This episode was recorded on December 9th 2024 thanks to when Scott Natalia Rusek will play to Daniel toe Hill day and turner Courtney Beasley and Dominique Crespo and of course thanks again to Maria Banks and Farah Ziberi for taking the time to come on the show.
00:46:46
Give us a rating and feedback on whatever platform you're listening to us on and tell us what you think of our podcast will be back next week.
00:46:54
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