A US-based company has successfully landed its spacecraft on the Moon, marking it as only the second private lander to reach this achievement.Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 touched down at 3:34 AM US Eastern Time (8:34 AM Irish time) in the vicinity of Mons Latreille, a volcanic structure located in Mare Crisium on the Moon’s northeastern near side.
“The lander has performed exceptionally well,” said Blue Ghost’s program manager Ray Allensworth during a live webcast from mission control in Austin, Texas.
“We’ve encountered no significant anomalies, which is excellent.”
The golden lander, roughly the size of a hippopotamus, was launched on January 15 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, capturing breathtaking visuals of the Earth and the Moon during its journey. It shared the ride with a lander from a Japanese company that is set to attempt a landing in May.
Blue Ghost is equipped with 10 instruments, including a lunar soil analyzer, a radiation-resistant computer, and an experiment to evaluate the use of the existing global satellite navigation system for navigation on the Moon.
Engineered to function for an entire lunar day (14 Earth days), Blue Ghost is slated to capture high-definition images of a total eclipse on March 14, when Earth obscures the Sun from the Moon’s horizon.
On March 16, it will document a lunar sunset, providing insights into how dust levitates above the surface under solar influence—creating the enigmatic lunar horizon glow first observed by Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost and ispace’s Resilience lunar landers launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 15.
Hopping drone
Blue Ghost’s debut will be succeeded on March 6 by fellow Texas company Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission, which will feature its lander, Athena.
In February 2024, Intuitive Machines became the first private company to accomplish a soft lunar landing—notably, the first US landing since the crewed Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
However, this success was marred by a mishap: the lander descended too rapidly and tipped over upon landing, preventing it from generating sufficient solar power and cutting the mission short.
This time, the company claims to have implemented significant enhancements to the hexagonal lander, which has a taller and slimmer design compared to Blue Ghost, standing around the height of an adult giraffe.
Athena was launched on Wednesday via a SpaceX rocket, charting a more direct path toward Mons Mouton—the southernmost lunar landing site ever pursued.
Its payload includes three rovers, a drill to search for ice, and the highlight: a first-of-its-kind hopping drone designed to navigate the Moon’s rugged terrain.
The golden lander is approximately the size of a hippopotamus.
NASA’s private Moon fleet
Landing on the Moon poses unique challenges due to the lack of atmosphere, rendering parachutes ineffective.
As a result, spacecraft must depend on precisely controlled thruster burns to decelerate their descent.
Before Intuitive Machines’ successful mission, only five national space agencies had achieved this feat: the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India, and Japan, in that order.
Now, the United States is striving to make private lunar missions commonplace through NASA’s $2.6 billion Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
These missions come at a critical juncture for NASA, amid speculation that it may reduce or even terminate its Artemis lunar program to prioritize Mars exploration—a key objective of both President Donald Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
