At 1:11 am on January 15, NASA’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 spacecraft blasted into the sky from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, riding on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and destined for the moon. On board: a telescope designed and built at Boston University. Among those watching the launch from just miles away—close enough to see the glowing tail of the engine—were BU engineer Brian Walsh and four of his teammates.
It’s a moment they’ve anticipated for over five years. Their telescope, Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI), will image the boundary of Earth’s magnetic field for the first time.
About an hour and five minutes after blast off, Blue Ghost—the lunar lander designed by private company Firefly Aerospace and commissioned by NASA—separated from the Falcon 9 rocket, all perfectly to plan.
“There are many mountains to climb on the way to the moon, and this was one of the big hills to get over,” says Walsh, a BU College of Engineering associate professor of mechanical engineering. “There is so much excitement, and anticipation for all the work still to come. It’s a true team effort to pull something like this off.”
The lander, shining golden against the backdrop of Earth, will now orbit our planet for about 25 days. Then, it will jet over to the moon, stay in orbit around the moon for another 16 days, and then touch down on the near side, in a flat region called Mare Crisium. Blue Ghost is equipped with 10 payloads, including LEXI, that will operate on the moon for 14 days. LEXI will be the first BU-created device to ever land on another planetary body.
“I am incredibly lucky to be part of a team like this, and be involved in something that is at the forefront of scientific technology and discovery,” says Ramiz A. Qudsi, a BU Center for Space Physics research scientist and lead data scientist and software developer for LEXI. He was in Florida to witness the launch, and will be part of the team sending commands to LEXI when it’s in transit and on the moon.