CARLSBAD, Calif. (KGTV) — A lunar landing Sunday morning has one Carlsbad company literally over the moon. Vulcan Wireless helped with the first commercial landing on the moon.
The name of the operation is Blue Ghost Mission One, which was funded by NASA and lead by Texas company, Firefly. Vulcan Wireless, based in Carlsbad, provided the lunar radios, which is helped with navigation and high speed data.
"Exhilaration, excitement, you're nervous," said Kevin Lynaugh, the president and CEO of Vulcan Wireless. "You know, it's very much like a sports. You know, I played football in high school, so it's very much that same feeling."
He's describing what he felt at around midnight on Sunday. He was in Austin, Texas for the moon landing, which is where mission control was based.
"America is going back to the moon," said Lynaugh. "So we're the early trailblazers for this program.
We first spoke to Lynaugh back in 2019 when Vulcan Wireless signed a partnership with NASA to advance moon and Mars technology.
Sunday, that partnership had a tangible outcome with a successful landing to the moon.
"You're kind of practicing like you play so this was, we practiced this for like a year and a half, so this was game time," said Lynaugh.
It took Blue Ghost about 45 days to land, and the next part of the mission is capturing high definition pictures of an eclipse.
Lynaugh's dad was a ham radio operator and instilled his passion throughout his youth. He remembers how his dad built a TV in the living room, and his father helped inspire him to start the company in 1993.
Lynaugh said this is one of three Blue Ghost missions, with each consecutive mission being more complicated than the last.
