Firefly Aerospace – the first private company to manage a fully successful lunar landing – announced on Monday that it completed its mission on its schedule.
The Blue Ghost Lander, launched from the Kennedy Space Center in January, landed on March 2nd without crashing or chipping.
On board, Lander conducted 10 NASA science and technology experiments as part of the agency’s Commercial Month Payload Services program.
The Cedar Park, Texas-based company said it meets 100% of its mission target in 14 days of 14-day surface operations. Lander was designed to survive only about five hours of harsh temperatures when it reaches the darkness of a moonlit night.
The last data Lander received was made on Sunday at 7:15pm. Coupled with a 346-hour daylight operation, this marks the longest commercial month operation ever, the company said.
“After a perfect lunar landing, the Firefly team will immediately move to surface operations, ensuring that all 10 NASA payloads acquire as much science as possible during the day of the moon,” Firefly CEO Jason Kim said in a press release.
Only two other commercial landers survived the attempts at soft landing, both from the intuitive Houston-based machines and the flying NASA payload. However, both of the company’s lands were turned over upon landing, limiting its ability to generate energy from blocked solar panels, and violating its mission. The most recent one was a lander named Athena, who tried to land a few days after a successful Firefly touchdown.
However, one major difference was that the firefly landing site was on a relatively clear topography of the moon’s northeast quadrant, while both intuitive machinery landings were near the moon’s Antarctic.
Commercial land from Japan and Israel crashed during their attempts, and another commercial company flying Pittsburgh-based astrobotic technology NASA had problems with propellant during its 2024 mission attempt and did not reach the moon.
Firefly’s success meant the first real victory of NASA’s CLPS program, due to its intuitive machines and the payload of Astrobotic Missions.
Firefly said it sent 119 GB of data back to Earth during the mission.
One of its payloads tracked global navigation satellite system data, including US-based GPS and signals from the European Galileo network, proving that similar items could be effective in the future in the month.
Other NASA payloads included an X-ray imager examining how solar wind interacted with the Earth’s magnetic field. Electrodes for measuring electric and magnetic fields deployed from the Lander to 60 feet. A computer designed to withstand radiation. A 3-foot depth drill to view the lunar temperatures underground. A Legolith collector named Planetvac.
“We are extremely proud of the demonstration that has allowed Blue Ghost to dig deeper into the moon than ever before, as it was the first time it was tracking the lunar GPS signal,” Kim said.
We focused more on the moon’s dust, including the instruments that saw its stickiness. Another thing I saw was the dust plume created when Lander landed. And the electrodynamic dust shield, designed by the Kennedy Space Center, was able to use electrodynamic forces to remove the moon’s dust.
The mission also came during the total solar eclipse from a lunar perspective. This is the same as the total lunar eclipse known as the blood lunar eclipse, as seen from Earth.
The Lander’s operation, which continued five hours after the lunar sunset, was designed to help NASA decide whether lunar dust would surface due to the effects of the sun observed by astronaut Eugene Sernan on the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
“This team continues to easily show near-impossible results, but there’s nothing like a simple moon landing, especially on the first attempt,” said Will Coogan of Firefly, Blue Ghost Chief Engineer. “We tested all of the Lander systems and simulated every mission scenario we could think of to get to this point.”
Firefly has several more missions under the NASA program over the next few years. The Blue Ghost Mission 2 features both a lander and a track vehicle called the Elytra Dark heading across the moon next year.
Original release: March 17, 2025, 11:36am Edit
