SHREVEPORT, La. -- Tuesday marked the third full day of the moon mission following a historic lunar landing pulled off by the Austin, TX-based company Firefly Aerospace.
A multitude of data collection, photography, drilling, and mapping exercises will be going on through the next eleven days.
The work that's gone into it is years in the making.
Elation erupted when Firefly's Blue Ghost lander set down successfully with its soft landing. Reporter Shannon Brinias got the chance a year ago during an encounter with the Firefly team to probe what this lander and its mission might mean for space exploration.
"This has been an incredible journey for us," said Trina Patterson, Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Firefly.
Patterson met up with Brinias at the Space Symposium, an annual gathering in Colorado Springs, CO, of leaders in the space industry, the military and government agencies.
There, a true-size model of Firefly's Blue Ghost drew outsized attention. This, while the real lander was in a clean room in Texas being loaded with experiments.
Patterson explained some of the Blue Ghost hallmarks. "It's our carbon fiber technology, which is a little wider, a little, a different center of gravity"
The carbon fiber framework proved critical when Blue Ghost descended from its low lunar orbit. There's also the unique design of the landing legs' pads. They look like woks and connect with sensors, showing when they came in contact with the moon's surface.
"They made a lunar landscape at our rocket ranch to go test for navigation. So it looks like where we're going to land. And if you go look at a Google map and see Briggs, Texas, you'll see the moon," said Patterson.
Firefly became the second private company ever to soft-land on the moon, and the first to do so successfully, staying upright. The lander sent back early photos showing the shadow of the lander standing on the moon's surface.
The mission is part of NASA's Consumer Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, in which the U.S. essentially contracts with commercial companies, outsourcing the delivery systems for payload experiments.
"So carrying ten massive payloads that are going to really do a lot of research and study to inform the Artemis program as we eventually send astronauts to the moon," said Patterson, describing the partnership.
Firefly's contract was for $101 million. Patterson says the team couldn't have achieved its goal without the legwork that had gone on before.
"Everything they have accomplished helps inform us, and that's what it's all about, is being able to learn from every step that we take, those small steps are super important. So it's even not that they weren't successful, it was just the first steps," she said.
This Firefly Aerospace lander went to the near side of the moon, landing at the Mare Crisium in the northeast quadrant visible from Earth.
The company also has another mission coming up to send a lander to the far side of the moon, which currently would be in radio silence. a part of their payload includes a device that will be put into lunar orbit around the moon to facilitate communications for that lander, and landers in the future.