Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost moon lander just etched its name into the history books.
Blue Ghost aced its touchdown try early this morning (March 2), becoming just the second private spacecraft ever to soft-land on the moon. The lander hauled 10 science experiments to the lunar surface for NASA, which was understandably happy with today’s result. The first photos from the probe showed Earth shining overhead.
“We’re on the moon!” Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said during the landing webcast. “I’m sorry — I’m just so excited right now.”
The touchdown action began today around 2:30 a.m. EST (0730 GMT), when Blue Ghost fired its engines in a “descent orbit insertion burn.” The maneuver put the car-sized lander, which had been circling the moon from about 62 miles (100 kilometers) up, on course for the lunar surface.
Related: Welcome to the moon! Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander reaches lunar orbit (video, photos)
The lander coasted for about 50 minutes, then began firing its thrusters again to reduce its orbital velocity and position itself above its targeted landing site — an area within Mare Crisium (“Sea of Crises”), a volcanic basin on the moon’s near side.
Nine minutes later, Blue Ghost shut off its main engine, entering the “terminal guidance” phase of the touchdown process. The lander continued to fire its small reaction control system thrusters to fine-tune its descent, heading for a relatively flat, boulder-free stretch of lunar ground that Blue Ghost autonomously selected as a safe landing spot.
The spacecraft notched all those milestones right on schedule. And then it stuck the landing, settling into the gray dirt as planned at 3:34 a.m. EST (0834 GMT).
“Every single thing was clockwork, even when we landed,” Firefly CEO Jason Kim said during the landing webcast. “We’ve got some moon dust on our boots!”
The first-ever private moon landing occurred just over a year ago; Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus spacecraft pulled off the feat in February 2024.
Building a brand-new moon lander
Blue Ghost, which is about 6.6 feet (3 meters) tall by 11.5 feet (3.5 m) wide, is Firefly’s first-ever moon lander. The company drew inspiration from a variety of sources to build the vehicle, including the Israeli group behind the Beresheet lander, said Ray Allensworth, Firefly’s spacecraft program director.
Beresheet made it to lunar orbit successfully but crashed during its touchdown try in April 2019.
“We were able to kind of witness their event and get a lot of their lessons learned,” Allensworth told Space.com on Wednesday (Feb. 26). “So, some of that kind of helped inform different directions that we might go in.”
Firefly also leveraged a blend of youthful exuberance and long-term spaceflight knowhow to develop Blue Ghost, she added.
“Young adults right out of college or in the first five years of their career really partnered up with people who have closer to 30 years experience in the industry,” Allensworth said. “So, you combine all these different data points along with your basic [lander] requirements, and it just kind of starts to to morph into what it is today.”
Helping NASA gear up for astronaut landings
In February 2021, Firefly scored a $93 million contract with NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which books rides for agency science gear on private moon landers. CLPS’ main goal is to gather lots of data about the lunar environment to help pave the way for the arrival of Artemis astronauts in the next few years.
Blue Ghost is carrying 10 NASA payloads on its current mission, which is called “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” These instruments are designed to do a variety of work, from studying radiation levels at the landing site to testing out new and better ways to collect and store samples of moon dirt and rock.
Blue Ghost launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Jan. 15 along with another private lunar lander — Resilience, which is built and operated by Tokyo-based company ispace.
The Firefly probe hit all its marks on the way to the moon. For example, it entered lunar orbit on Feb. 13 as planned and lowered its path to the 62-mile-high orbit 11 days later. Blue Ghost captured stunning video of the lunar surface just after reaching that lower orbit — something that caught the mission team a bit off guard.
“I would say we had no idea we were going to get the imagery back that we’ve been getting,” Allensworth said. “Those are not, like, planned passes that the marketing team dictated. We just started turning on all the cameras during every maneuver, and then, during high-gain passes, we just downlink anything we get. And so those might be the most surprising, because the videos pop up and you’re like, ‘Oh my God. That’s incredible!'”
The solar-powered Blue Ghost will now operate for about 14 Earth days on the lunar surface. Its final few days should be especially memorable.
“On March 14, Firefly expects to capture high-definition imagery of a total eclipse when the Earth blocks the sun above the moon’s horizon,” Firefly representatives wrote in a mission description.
“Blue Ghost will then capture the lunar sunset on March 16, providing data on how lunar dust levitates due to solar influences and creates a lunar horizon glow first documented by Eugene Cernan on Apollo 17,” they added. “Following sunset, Blue Ghost will operate several hours into the lunar night.”
Related: The moon: Everything you need to know about Earth’s companion
A private lunar exploration wave
Firefly’s mission is part of an unprecedented surge of private lunar exploration. For example, Resilience — which is not flying a CLPS mission but will collect moon dirt under a separate NASA contract — is scheduled to make its landing try in late May or early June.
And Intuitive Machines (IM) launched its second lunar lander, named Athena, atop a Falcon 9 on Wednesday evening (Feb. 26). Athena — which is flying via CLPS, like Blue Ghost (and like Odysseus did) — is scheduled to touch down on March 6 near the moon’s south pole. The lander will also deploy a hopping spacecraft built by Intuitive Machines and a small rover provided by another company, Colorado-based Lunar Outpost.
Firefly is happy to be part of this exploration wave and feels a kinship with the other companies involved, Allensworth said.
“It’s a really exciting time,” she said. “To create a really robust economic solution and future infrastructure, you need multiple people in order to make that happen. So we do want success for IM, ispace and all these other vendors that are going.”
Article by:Source: mwall@space.com (Mike Wall)
