LRO mission specialists have published images showing two sites on the Moon. They have been chosen as landing sites for private missions realized by Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines.
The first series of images shows a section of the surface near the Mons Latreille volcanic cone. It was formed billions of years ago by a massive eruption of basaltic magma that formed Mare Crisium.
This area has been chosen as the landing site for the Blue Ghost vehicle built by Firefly Aerospace. It had already entered a selenocentric orbit and performed a series of maneuvers that lowered its altitude. Blue Ghost is scheduled to land on March 2. The mission’s scientific payload is represented by 10 instruments transferred by NASA.
The second series of LRO images shows the area around Mons Mouton, the highest lunar mountain officially named. Its height from base to top is 6 km, and it is located 160 km from the Moon’s South Pole. Mons Mouton is thought to have formed as part of the rim of the South Pole-Aitken impact basin. Therefore, it is of great interest to lunar scientists trying to reconstruct the events responsible for forming the early Moon.
This location was chosen for the landing of the Athena vehicle built by Intuitive Machines. It is scheduled for March 6. After landing, Athena will drill the lunar surface to search for water ice and volatiles, and will also land several self-propelled vehicles.
It is worth noting that Athena’s landing site is in the central part of one of the potential landing areas for the Artemis 3 mission. Thus, its participants could, in theory, see the vehicle similarly as the Apollo 12 astronauts inspected the Surveyor 3 probe and then brought some of its components back to Earth.
According to LROC
