Six STEM Tweets - special Blue Ghost (Firefly) edition

Author

Harshal Chhaya
March 20, 2025

Six STEM Tweets

Six Seven tweets that celebrate engineering and all things STEM.

I scroll so you don’t have to.

This is a special issue dedicated to Firefly Aerospace’s lunar lander that did - Blue Ghost landed on the moon, collected lots of useful data and sent it back. It was the 2nd private lander to reach the moon and the 1st one to complete its mission successfully.

What an amazing feat of human engineering and engineering as a discipline!

#1 🤯 

Take off was on March 15th 2025

The mission had 45-day transit to the moon - 25 days in Earth orbit, 4 days in lunar transit, and 16 days in lunar orbit. And a 14 day mission on the lunar surface

#2 🤯 

According to NASA: The Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER) is now the deepest robotic planetary subsurface thermal probe, reaching up to 3 feet (1 meter). Providing a first-of-its kind demonstration of robotic thermal measurements at varying depths, LISTER uses gas as the primary means of excavating (without conventional rotary or percussive drilling elements), as well as a coiled metal tube that straightens out and bores down in the hole created by the compressed gas. 

#3 🤯 

According to NASA:

The Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) acquired and tracked Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals, from satellite networks such as GPS and Galileo, in transit and on the surface of the Moon. This is the first time a navigation solution has been achieved using GNSS signals in lunar orbit and on the Moon. 

#4 🤯 

We get to see a photo of the sun emerging from behind the earth! Taken from the moon.

#5 🤯 

#6 🤯 

The mission lasted one full lunar day - 14 Earth days - and did a lot of new and useful research.

#7 🤯 

The goodbye message reads:

Mission mode change detected, now in Monument Mode Goodnight friends.

After exchanging our final bits of data, I will hold vigil on this spot in Mare Crisium to watch humanity's continued journey to the stars.

Here, I will outlast your mightiest rivers, your tallest mountains, and perhaps even your species as we know it.

But it is remarkable that a species might be outlasted by its own ingenuity.

Here lies Blue Ghost, a testament to the team who, with the loving support of their families and friends, built and operated this machine and its payloads. to push the capabilities and knowledge of humanity one small step further.

Per aspera ad astra!

Love, Blue Ghost

Me: 😭 

About

This newsletter is my way of sharing interesting science-related news with my curious friends. I enjoy finding science and math connections in our world.

Please share this newsletter with others. Let’s encourage curiosity.

- Harshal (@hschhaya on X/Twitter)

That’s it for this issue.

Hit ‘reply’ to tell me what you think.

And hit ‘forward’ to share with your friends and family.

Let’s all celebrate science and engineering and curiosity.

(all past issues are at https://sixstemtweets.beehiiv.com/)

Best wishes,

Harshal