Norman Rivera (BS/AE, ’09) and Peyton Whitehead (BS/ME, ’19) have been looking at the Moon much differently over the last few weeks, knowing they played a role in having something land on its surface.
The University of Tennessee graduates work for Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based private company which recently completed a successful mission on the Moon. Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 (BGM1) is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. The Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down on the Moon’s surface on March 2, in an upright, stable configuration on the company’s first attempt.
Throughout its 45-day journey to the Moon, Blue Ghost traveled 2.8 million miles, downlinked more than 119 GB of data, and supported several payload science operations.
“It was awe-inspiring to see the hi-res images of the Earth and Moon while in orbit, during the landing, a solar eclipse, and sunset on the Moon from something that I helped design and build,” said Rivera, who was the lead wire harness engineer for BGM1. “I love going on road trips and taking photos along the way, so this has been an exciting experience to share with friends and family.”
Rivera is an electrical engineering manager at Firefly Aerospace responsible for avionics interconnects, which are the electrical wiring harnesses that connect all the electronics together in Firefly’s rockets and spacecraft.
Whitehead is one of Firefly’s two supplier quality engineers. He is responsible for vetting the company’s suppliers and doing technical clearing to make sure the suppliers are in compliance.
“There was a lot of belief going into this mission that everything was good to go,” Whitehead said. “The dedicated team at the hive, especially the ones in mission control, were practicing for months ahead of time, rolling through any scenario that could have occurred, and then how to counter that, and what the backup systems are.”
Data and imagery compilation
Blue Ghost was carrying 10 NASA instruments. Shock absorbing legs stabilized the lander as it touched down on the Moon next to a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille.
Blue Ghost conducted surface operations and supported several NASA science and technology demonstrations over a 14-day period. The surface operations included lunar subsurface drilling, sample collection, X-ray imaging, and dust mitigation experiments.
Blue Ghost captured high-definition imagery of a total eclipse when the Earth blocks the sun above the Moon’s horizon on March 14, and captured the lunar sunset on March 16th, providing data on how lunar dust levitates due to solar influences and creates a lunar horizon glow.
In his role as lead wire harness engineer, Rivera led a small team of engineers to design, build, test, and integrate the harness on the lunar lander.
“The most interesting part of BGM1 for me were all the NASA science experiments and data that was collected over the entire duration of the mission while in orbit and on the lunar surface,” Rivera said. “These are going to inform the designs and operations on future missions and allows humanity to keep moving forward in advancing towards more presence in space and on the planets in our solar system.”
Inspiring future generations
Whitehead credits a computer aided drafting/manufacturing class he took at UT with MABE Professor Chad Duty for providing him with the fundamental skills he’s needed to find success at a company like Firefly Aerospace.
“I thought going into my career, that I was going to be a design guy. I think a lot of engineers have in their head that they’re going to put something to a drawing, and then it’s going to be designed,” Whitehead said. “My path took me down the manufacturing side, something that originally I thought would be temporary, and then has become something I truly enjoy.”
The Blue Ghost lander has a plaque listing the names of the Firefly employees to commemorate their contributions to the mission. Rivera hopes BGM1 can inspire future generations of engineers and scientists to pursue their passions and dreams.
“It was extremely rewarding to see the success we achieved on our first attempt,” Rivera said. “It took a lot of hard work, long hours, and talented people to make this mission a success. It’s so cool to have hardware that I worked on make it to the moon in one piece and will be there for millions of years.”
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey (865-974-0683, rpotkey@utk.edu)