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Firefly Aerospace’s upcoming Blue Ghost lunar lander will assist NASA in enhancing its comprehension of our planet and its reactions to cosmic weather.
The Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager device, or LEXI, is among 10 NASA instruments aboard Blue Ghost, which is scheduled for launch at 1:11 a.m. EST (0611 GMT) on Wednesday (Jan. 15) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
LEXI, an X-ray imaging device, features nine lobster-eye micropore optical components and is engineered to observe the interaction between solar wind and Earth’s magnetosphere. It will capture low-energy X-rays produced when the solar wind collides with Earth’s magnetic field at the magnetopause, which is the outer limit of the magnetosphere.
The device will monitor how the magnetosphere expands and contracts, in addition to other shape modifications caused by fluctuating solar wind strengths from the perspective of the moon, offering a distinctive, first global insight into this phenomenon.
Related: Double lunar mission! SpaceX to launch 2 private moon landers in January
“We anticipate viewing the magnetosphere inhaling and exhaling, for the first time,” stated Hyunju Connor, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, during a NASA statement. “When the solar wind is exceptionally strong, the magnetosphere will contract and push back towards Earth, and then expand when the solar wind diminishes.”
Findings from LEXI may aid in alleviating the effects of space weather on satellites and terrestrial systems such as power grids, thus improving the resilience of infrastructure.
Another remarkable feature of LEXI is that it won’t be the device’s inaugural journey to space. LEXI was initially constructed as STORM, a tech demonstration that was launched on a sounding rocket in 2012. It has been refurbished as a cost-efficient innovation as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
Firefly was chosen for its forthcoming mission through CLPS, which engages companies to deliver NASA scientific instruments and payloads to the lunar surface.
This marks the first lander from Firefly, and the spacecraft will take a roundabout route to the moon, firstly spending 25 days elevating its orbit around Earth prior to executing an engine burn to direct it toward the moon. Blue Ghost will then take an additional 16 days to reduce its lunar orbit and prepare for touchdown. LEXI will be activated for its mission once the debris from Blue Ghost’s landing settles.
Also accompanying the SpaceX rocket on Wednesday will be the Resilience lunar lander, engineered by the Japanese company ispace.
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