Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
X-raying the Earth's Magnetic Shield from the Moon
On January 16, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Lander launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 16, as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, a program where NASA works with industry to deliver payloads and scientific instruments to the Moon, as part of NASA's Artemis campaign of lunar exploration. On March 2, Blue Ghost successfully landed on the surface of the moon (the first lunar landing for Firefly). One of the instruments on-board Blue Ghost is LEXI, the Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager. LEXI's main mission is to help understand how earth's magnetic shield, the magnetosphere, responds to charged particles from the solar wind by taking low-energy X-ray images of the earth's magnetosphere to provide a big-picture understanding of the space weather around earth. LEXI images will be important for understanding how the space-weather environment affects everything from telecommunication satellites to astronauts in earth orbit. The image above is a visualization of Blue Ghost on the surface of the moon. LEXI is the telescope-like extension pointing off the lander to the upper right in the image. For six days after the start of observations, LEXI will image the low-energy X-rays from the magnetopause, the place where the wind from the Sun impacts the earth's magnetic field. Observing from the surface of the moon means that, unlike other X-ray instruments, LEXI will be able to view how the entire magnetopause responds to changes in the solar wind. You can watch the landing video, and get updates of the mission status at the Firefly Aerospace site.
Published: March 3, 2025
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Page Author: Dr. Michael F. Corcoran
Last modified Monday, 03-Mar-2025 21:16:59 EST