Coeur d'Alene native works on recently launched lunar lander

Coeur d'Alene native Chris Major is over the moon after a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1 lander launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida earlier this week. He served as a principal investigator on the project.

According to a NASA release, "the lander will carry 10 NASA science investigations to further our understanding of the Moon's environment and help prepare for future human missions to the lunar surface, as part of the agency's Moon to Mars exploration approach."

Firefly's Blue Ghost is expected to make landfall on the moon in March, where it will spend 14 days collecting data on the lunar surface. The data collected could be instrumental in future expeditions to the moon — unmanned or otherwise.

"It was practically perfect," Major said. "There were no scrubs, no delays, no issues."

The launch site held special significance, as the same launchpad saw the liftoff of the Apollo missions decades ago.

The technology is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. Major said the mission is a test to see if the technology can survive a trip to the moon, as well as the lunar conditions once the lander arrives.

Major, 28, has long been reaching for the stars. Now living and working in Bozeman, Mont., as a principal engineer with Resilient Computing, he holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Montana State University.

His interest in space technology began during his undergraduate years, when he became immersed in Montana State's Space Science and Engineering program. He later wrote his dissertation as a Ph.D. student on fault tolerance in space computers. This work has continued at Resilient Computing, which is focused on developing hardware capable of surviving harsh radiation in space.

    Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission One lander.