Local skills and knowledge are part of the Blue Ghost spacecraft which recently landed the Moon.
Vasily Piccone, 24, grew up in Hawkesbury. His parents are Louis and Elena Piccone. He attended Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute (VCI) for grades nine and 10, and graduated from St. Francis-Xavier Catholic High School in Hammond. The McGill University graduate, who has a degree in Electrical Engineering, now works for Firefly Aerospace of Austin, Texas. The company built the Blue Ghost, which landed on the Moon on March 2 and is the first commercial spacecraft to land there. Blue Ghost left Earth on January 15 for its 2.8 million mile/4.5 million kilometre trip from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and is exploring an area on the Moon known as the Sea of Crises. The mission is a collaboration between the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and private companies as part of the Commercial Lunar Payloads Service program. Blue Ghost is an unmanned spacecraft for scientific research purposes.
“I’ve been interested in space since I was about six,” Piccone said in a telephone interview from Austin. He remembers memorizing encyclopedia information at an early age.
“I learned all about the solar system,” Piccone said.
His other early space-related interests included model rockets and using a telescope for some backyard astronomy.
While studying at McGill University, Piccone interned at Space X, and at MDA in Montréal.
On the Blue Ghost project, Piccone has worked on electronic components involving the rockets that propelled the craft into space. The spacecraft contains 10 NASA instruments for gathering scientific information. Piccone gets to see data the spacecraft relays back to Earth. Blue Ghost will spend two weeks on the lunar surface. Part of its mission is to gather information about conditions during the lunar night.
The remoteness and isolation of space fascinates Piccone.
“It really is the final frontier for humanity,” he remarked.
Piccone said if there was a call for people to help colonize deep space, the idea would be intriguing to him. He thinks of visiting space and would take a one-way ticket to Mars if he had no family connections at home on Earth.
“There’s something romantic about being the first people to explore something for the first time,” he said.
Despite the ongoing efforts of scientists and governments, Piccone does not believe humans will be on Mars during the next 15 years.
Firefly Aerospace photos of Blue Ghost
