“What are you doing, Luna, in heaven? Tell me, what are you doing, silent moon? “, Leopardi wondered in his night singing of a wandering shepherd in Asia in 1830. Today on the moon not only, with the Apollo missions, we walked, not only are we preparing, with the imminent Artemis missions, to return again to put real human outposts, but also the private companies begin to send their spacecraft.
In fact, the Blue Ghost spacecraft, of the Texana Firefly Aerospace, has just been landed (indeed enthusiasm). In short, the Space Economy becomes increasingly important, and it also concerns us, given that the Lugre receiver (Lunar Gnss Receveir Experiment) is installed on board Blue Ghost, an indispensable tool for testing the signals of the GNSS system, and made in collaboration between NASA and Italian Space Agency (the receiver was made by Quasom). Firefly can therefore declare that it has become “the first commercial company of history to successfully complete a landing on the moon”. The place of the Alunaggio is in Mons Latreille, a volcanic formation in the sea Crisum (they are called Mari, but there is no water, nor can you plan to go there on summer vacation), on the visible side of the moon, but in recent days we have been able to see a spectacular video, shot by the spacecraft, of the hidden face of the moon just 100 km.
Who knows what Leopardi would have said, perhaps he would have been not very poetic for him, but reading the Zibaldone he would have thrilled himself for the scientific part. Speaking of hidden face, while we know our satellite more and more, and the companies and space agencies invest money to explore it thoroughly, in the collective imagination the idea of The Dark Side of the Moon of Pink Floyd remained.
No, there is no dark side, when it is enlightened it is exactly like the one facing the earth, it is only shot on the other side. As for the silent moon, it will soon be populated by wandering astronauts, who will be able to recite Leopardi from the opposite point of view: tell me what you do, earth, in heaven? Tell me, what are you doing, silent land?