The video released by Firefly Aerospace on Tuesday shows Blue Ghost Lunar Lander’s historic touchdown.
The Cedar Park, Texas-based commercial company was on its first trip to the month with the help of NASA’s Commercial Month Payload Services program.
The intuitive machine of a fellow Texas state managed soft landing in 2024 under the program, but the company’s Lander tilted the Odysseus to one side. NASA could not gather from onboard experiments as much as it had the lander erected.
The Blue Ghost did just that, nailing the landing early on Sunday and launching a 14-day mission with 10 NASA payloads that remain active during the moon’s day.
The released video shows the spacecraft away from the hazards of surfaces identified during descent from lunar orbit.
The company said the lander landed within a planned target radius at the Chrysium, a mare in the northeast quadrant of the lunar surface, as seen from the Northern Hemisphere.
The video excited UCF Professor Phil Metzger, who is most interested in how moon dust interacts when the spacecraft lands.
“This is amazing! It will be a treasure to quantify feather-ground interactions during lunar landing,” he posted on X.
This is amazing! It will be a treasure for quantifying feather surface interactions during lunar landing. There are a few things I don’t understand yet and it takes time to unpack. (Note: I don’t support missions, so this is my private meditation.) 🧵/1 https://t.co/6wh8hid0hz
– March 4th, 2025, Dr. Philmetzger (@drphiltill)
Some NASA payloads are trying to get more information about the lunar dust, such as an electrodynamic dust shield developed by a team at the Kennedy Space Center. Another, called the stereo camera for the Moon plum surface research, checks what kind of dust plume is being kicked up by Lander. The third is called Lunaretobac, known as the lunar planet, and samples the lunar regolith.
“Blue Ghost has been busy since parked on the moon!” the company posted on X on Tuesday afternoon. “In the last two days, the data we downlinked has jumped from 27 GB to 57 GB as we continue our NASA.
Payload operation. ”
Another payload has already won the partnership between NASA and the Italian Space Agency. That happened Monday when the lunar GNSS receiver experiment successfully captured Earth-based navigation signals from the US GPS and the European Galileo system to capture versions of both global navigation satellite systems.
Kevin Coggins, assistant associate administrator of NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation Program, said the signal would premonitor the Artemis program’s lunar and Mars aspirations.
“This is a very exciting discovery for the lunar sailing,” he said. “We hope to utilize this feature in our future missions.”
Firefly Mission is the most active NASA CLPS program to date. The first mission with Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology in January 2024 fell into propulsion problems after launch and did not reach the moon. The intuitive machine launched its second mission in February 2024, but some of the payloads were unable to work after a touchdown.
Fireflies reached the moon this January and took a long time to take the final approach.
The fourth and second missions of the intuitive machine, launched last week by the Kennedy Space Center, are on a more direct path. It will attempt to land at 12:32pm on Thursday, and will target the lunar Antarctic for the first time.
The same Nova-C Lander design used in the first mission – this is the name Athena, and is hoping to drive small rovers and hoppers into the craters, bringing them a NASA drill that hunts ice and other volatiles.
Other CLPS missions that could fly this year include a third intuitive machine flight. This is the second from Astrobotic and the first from Blue Origin.
Original issue: March 4th, 2025, 2:53pm EST
