Space is All About Successes and Setbacks

Space exploration is all about successes and setbacks, and there was some of both this week. I'm Tom Patton, and here are some of the top stories from The Journal of Space Commerce this week.

We'll start with a success. On Sunday, Blue Ghost Mission 1 ... dubbed by Firefly Aerospace as "Ghost Riders in the Sky"… successfully landed on the Moon. The achievement marked the first time that a commercial company achieved a fully successful soft landing on the lunar surface.

The lander touched down at 2:34 a.m. CST on Sunday within its 100-meter landing target next to a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille. Blue Ghost’s shock absorbing legs stabilized the lander as it touched down, and inertial readings confirmed the lander was upright in a stable configuration.

The surface operations now underway include lunar subsurface drilling, sample collection, X-ray imaging, and dust mitigation experiments. On March 14, Firefly expects to capture high-definition imagery of a total eclipse when the Earth blocks the sun above the Moon’s horizon. On March 16, Blue Ghost will then capture the lunar sunset, providing data on how lunar dust levitates due to solar influences and creates a lunar horizon glow first documented by Eugene Cernan on Apollo 17. Following the sunset, Blue Ghost will operate several hours into the lunar night and continue to capture imagery that observes how levitating dust behavior changes after the sunset.

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The news was not so good for Intuitive Machines. The IM-2 mission Athena Lander overshot its planned landing zone by about 250 meters and landed inside a crater near the lunar south pole.

Intuitive Machines knew something had gone wrong shortly after the landing. but during a news conference with NASA Thursday afternoon, Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus remained optimistic about what they might be able to achieve.

"We don't believe we're in the correct attitude on the Moon yet again," Altemus said. "I can say that we are charging on the surface, We are commanding uplink and downlink from the vehicle to our ground network ... so we are communicating. We can command payloads on and off, we can send commands to the vehicle, and we have powered down and done some power conservation steps as prudent measures to see how long and what objectives we can accomplish in the mission going forward. When we get that full assessment, we will then work closely with NASA science and technology groups to identify science objectives that are of the highest priority. And then we'll figure out what the mission profile will look (like). It will be off-nominal, because we are not getting everything we asked for in terms of power generation, communication, etc."

On its website Friday, the company said that after landing, mission controllers were able to accelerate several program and payload milestones, including NASA’s PRIME-1 suite, before the lander’s batteries depleted.

But with the direction of the sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge, and so declared the mission to be concluded.

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SpaceX conducted its eighth flight test of its full stack Starship spacecraft on Thursday. The test was reminiscent of a long foul ball to left field. The Starship Super Heavy booster performed nominally. The second stage, or "ship" separated successfully from the booster, and the booster was recovered intact back at Starbase in south Texas. And then ...

"And we just saw some engines go out ... it looks like we are losing attitude control of the Shi