Witness St. Charles native make history on moon landing live-stream Sunday

The St. Charles community and people around the world can witness history Sunday as a former D303 student – now rocket scientist – hopes to land a spacecraft on the surface of the moon.

St. Charles native Benjamin Tackett could join an exclusive group of space explorers if his team successfully can execute its mission, which is expected to land just before 3 a.m. on March 2.

The landing will be broadcast live beginning at 1:30 a.m. on Youtube.

Tackett is one of two systems engineers on Blue Ghost Mission 1, by Texas-based space company Firefly Aerospace.

Blue Ghost is an unmanned lunar lander that left Earth on Jan. 15 aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, launched from the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Blue Ghost spacecraft separated from the SpaceX rocket shortly after entering orbit and began its solo journey to the moon.

Tackett and the rest of the Firefly team have been guiding and operating the spacecraft from mission control in Texas since the launch.

Nearing the end of its 45-day journey, Blue Ghost has been orbiting the moon since Feb. 14 and will begin its final descent this weekend.

Firefly Aerospace and NASA will stream the landing live on their YouTube channels. Both streams are scheduled to begin at 1:30 a.m. March 2, with the landing time estimated no earlier than 2:45 a.m.

To see the mission’s progress so far or for live updates with photos and videos from aboard the lunar lander, visit the Blue Ghost Mission 1 webpage.

Blue Ghost’s mission objective is to complete a soft landing, meaning the lander and payload will touch down on the moon’s surface without incurring significant damage – a feat that only has been done successfully a handful of times in history.

Once on the moon, Blue Ghost will continue operations for 14 days (equal to one full lunar day) after landing, during which Firefly hopes to capture the first imagery of a lunar sunset from the surface of the moon.

While on the moon, Blue Ghost will perform subsurface drilling, collect samples, measure radiation, and measure and mitigate lunar dust. It also will deliver 10 payloads of NASA’s science and technology instruments to the surface for NASA, valued at more than $100 million.

The Firefly team hopes the mission will provide critical data about the moon’s geophysical characteristics and the interaction of solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field.

Blue Ghost is Firefly’s first moon mission and it would be the first soft landing executed by an American commercial company and the 60-day mission would be the longest operation of its kind.

This is not Tackett’s first time working on missions to space. He’s been part of Mars missions during his time at NASA Langley Research Center.

Before beginning his career as a rocket scientist, Tackett was a student at District 303 schools including Fox Ridge Elementary, Haines Middle School and St. Charles North High School, where he was an honor role student and member of the hockey team.

After graduating, Tackett earned a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Purdue University.