​NASA astronaut Don Pettit, along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, successfully concluded a 220-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) with a safe landing in Kazakhstan on April 20, 2025. Their spacecraft, Soyuz MS-26, touched down southeast of Dzhezkazgan at 6:20 a.m. local time (9:20 p.m. EDT on April 19), coinciding with Pettit’s 70th birthday.​
The trio launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on September 11, 2024, and participated in Expeditions 71 and 72. During their time on the ISS, they orbited Earth 3,520 times, covering approximately 93.3 million miles.​
Throughout the mission, the crew conducted various scientific experiments. Pettit focused on enhancing in-orbit metal 3D printing capabilities, advancing water sanitization technologies, exploring plant growth under varying water conditions, and investigating fire behavior in microgravity.​
Following their return, the crew underwent routine medical evaluations. Pettit was transported to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, while Ovchinin and Vagner returned to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia.​
​Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, launched on January 15, 2025, and landed on the Moon on March 2, 2025, marked a significant milestone as the first fully successful commercial lunar landing. Operating for over 14 Earth days on the lunar surface, the mission achieved all its objectives, collecting and transmitting approximately 119 gigabytes of data, including high-definition images of lunar phenomena such as sunsets and a total solar eclipse.​
The Blue Ghost lander carried ten NASA-sponsored science and technology payloads designed to advance lunar exploration and prepare for future human missions:​
Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER): Developed by Honeybee Robotics, LISTER utilized pneumatic drilling to measure the Moon’s thermal gradient and conductivity up to depths of 2–3 meters, providing insights into the lunar interior’s heat flow.
Lunar PlanetVac (LPV): Also from Honeybee Robotics, LPV demonstrated a rapid, low-mass method for collecting and sorting lunar regolith using bursts of gas, aiding in sample collection for analysis or potential return to Earth.​
Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR): Provided by the University of Maryland, this instrument served as a target for Earth-based lasers to precisely measure the Earth-Moon distance, enhancing our understanding of lunar geophysics and fundamental physics.​
Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC): Developed by Aegis Aerospace, RAC assessed how lunar dust adheres to various materials over time, informing the design of dust-resistant surfaces for future lunar equipment.​
Radiation Tolerant Computer (RadPC): From Montana State University, RadPC tested a computing system capable of withstanding the Moon’s harsh radiation environment, crucial for long-duration lunar missions.​
Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS): Developed by NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, EDS employed electric fields to remove dust from surfaces, demonstrating a self-cleaning technology for lunar habitats and instruments.​
Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI): A collaboration between Boston University, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and Johns Hopkins University, LEXI captured X-ray images of interactions between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetosphere, contributing to space weather research.​
Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS): From Southwest Research Institute, LMS measured electric and magnetic fields to study the Moon’s mantle structure and composition, enhancing our knowledge of lunar geology.​
Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE): A joint effort by the Italian Space Agency and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, LuGRE tested the reception of GPS and Galileo signals on the Moon, paving the way for lunar navigation systems.​
Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS): Developed by NASA Langley Research Center, SCALPSS recorded high-resolution images of the lander’s descent, analyzing the effects of rocket plumes on the lunar surface to inform future landing strategies.​
Blue Ghost Mission 1’s success not only demonstrated the viability of commercial lunar missions but also provided valuable data to support NASA’s Artemis program and the broader scientific community’s understanding of the Moon.
The night sky on Mars shares some familiar features with what we see from Earth, but also presents a few dramatic differences. Since Mars is farther from the Sun than Earth, its sky becomes darker more quickly after sunset, revealing a clearer and more brilliant canopy of stars. With a thinner atmosphere and less light pollution, the stars on Mars appear sharp and more numerous to the naked eye. The Milky Way stretches across the sky much like it does on Earth, but with a bit more clarity due to the reduced atmospheric scattering.
One of the most striking differences in the Martian night sky is the presence of its two small moons, Phobos and Deimos. These irregularly shaped satellites are far smaller than Earth’s Moon, so they don’t dominate the sky in the same way. Phobos, the closer and faster-moving moon, rises in the west and sets in the east in just over 4 hours, appearing several times in a single Martian night. It looks like a bright star or a small disk moving rapidly across the sky. Deimos is smaller and more distant, moving slowly and appearing like a faint star that drifts lazily overhead.
Because of Mars’ distance from Earth, familiar constellations still appear in similar patterns, though slightly shifted. From the Martian perspective, Earth is just a bright bluish “star” in the sky, never appearing larger than a dot without a telescope. Depending on the season and viewing direction, other planets like Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus are also visible, and occasionally even brighter than they are from Earth. Meteor showers can still be seen on Mars, though they originate from different sources due to the planet’s unique orbit.
Another beautiful phenomenon visible on Mars is the aurora, which unlike Earth’s polar-focused light displays, can occur all over the planet due to Mars’ lack of a global magnetic field. These auroras are typically ultraviolet and would require special instruments to see, but they add to the mysterious charm of Martian nights. Overall, the Martian sky offers a uniquely serene and otherworldly view of the cosmos, blending the familiar with the alien in a way that’s both humbling and awe-inspiring.
Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/ESO/Bill Dunford
Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost, or simply Blue Ghost, is a class of lunar landers designed and manufactured by American private company Firefly Aerospace. Firefly plans to operate Blue Ghost landers to deliver small payloads to the surface of the Moon. The first Blue Ghost mission was launched at 1:11 a.m. EST (06:11 UTC) on January 15, 2025. It successfully landed on the Moon on March 2, 2025. The landers are named after the firefly species Phausis reticulata, known as blue ghosts.
Firefly is the prime contractor for lunar delivery services using Blue Ghost landers. Firefly provides or subcontracts Blue Ghost payload integration, launch from Earth, landing on the Moon and mission operations. Firefly’s Cedar Park facility serves as the company’s mission operations center and the location of payload integration. Firefly operates a 50,000-square-foot (4,600 m2) spacecraft facility with two mission control centers and an ISO-8 cleanroom to accommodate multiple landers.
Blue Ghost has four landing legs. It supplies data, power, and thermal resources for payload operations through transit to the Moon, in lunar orbit, and on the lunar surface. The spacecraft is designed and built to be easily adapted to each customer’s cislunar needs. Blue Ghost can be customized to support larger, more complex missions, including lunar night operations, surface mobility, and sample return, and is compatible with multiple launch providers. Firefly asserts that in-house end-to-end manufacturing and testing of the Blue Ghost structure is a differentiator among the CLPS landers.
NASA awarded Firefly the first Blue Ghost lunar delivery task order in February 2021 as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
NASA is planning a lunar landing near the moon’s South Pole in the 2026 time period, this mission is to be followed by the establishment of a lunar base later in the same decade. The Vertical Solar Array Technology (VSAT) project is focused on the development of solar array technologies necessary for sustained presence on the lunar surface circa 2030. Existing solar array structures and deployment system technologies are designed for either zero-g or horizontal surface deployment. VSAT will explore deployment of vertical arrays on masts of up to 10m in length in order to capture continuous sun light at the lunar south pole. The VSAT system must also be capable of stable deployment on uneven terrain and autonomous retraction to enable system mobility on the moon’s surface.
Finally, given the nature of space operations and the fuel requirements associated with a lunar landing, VSAT will be designed to be as lightweight as possible. The VSAT project objective is to engage industry in the development of the underlying technologies necessary for solar array deployments at the moon’s south pole. As part of the engagement process, the project will develop a reference mission and design to guide industry efforts. It is also expected that the project will fabricate high-risk elements of the reference design for development and test purposes. After creation of the reference missions and designs the project will solicit industry studies and analysis for the purpose of contracting with several vendors for eventual hardware development.
The VSAT project design goals are:
Vertical array deployment on extended mast in uneven terrain
Deployment mechanisms, and array system, designed for reliable, autonomous retraction and system mobility
Array system designed to be modular, adaptable to multiple mission architectures, and to minimize mass and packing volume
The Space Launch System (SLS) is an American super heavy-lift expendable launch vehicle used by NASA. As the primary launch vehicle of the Artemis Moon landing program, SLS is designed to launch the crewed Orion spacecraft on a trans-lunar trajectory. The first (and so far only) SLS launch was the uncrewed Artemis I, which took place on 16 November 2022.
Development of SLS began in 2011 as a replacement for the retiring Space Shuttle as well as the canceled Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles. SLS was built using existing Shuttle technology, including solid rocket boosters and RS-25 engines. The rocket has been criticized for its political motivations, seen as a way to preserve jobs and contracts for aerospace companies involved in the Shuttle program at great expense to NASA. The project has faced significant challenges, including mismanagement, substantial budget overruns, and significant delays. The first Congressionally mandated launch in late 2016 was delayed by nearly six years.
All Space Launch System flights are to be launched from Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The first three SLS flights are expected to use the Block 1 configuration, comprising a core stage, extended Space Shuttle boosters developed for Ares I and the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) upper stage. The improved Block 1B configuration, with the powerful and purpose-built Exploration Upper Stage (EUS), is planned to be introduced on the fourth flight; a further improved Block 2 configuration with new solid rocket boosters is planned for the ninth flight. After the launch of Artemis IV, NASA plans to transfer production and launch operations of SLS to Deep Space Transport LLC, a joint venture between Boeing and Northrop Grumman.
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