Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1 has successfully soft-landed on the moon, making Texas-based Firefly Aerospace only the second private-sector company ever to complete such a feat.
It has landed near Mons Latreille, a volcanic feature in Mare Crisium on the Moon's northeastern near side.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander descended from lunar orbit on autopilot, aiming for the slopes of an ancient volcanic dome in an impact basin on the moon’s northeastern edge of the near side.
Firefly Aerospace took to X and posted, "We have confirmation #BlueGhost stuck the landing! Firefly just became the first commercial company in history to achieve a fully successful Moon landing. This small step on the Moon represents a giant leap in commercial exploration. Congratulations to the entire Firefly team, our mission partners, and our @NASA customers for this incredible feat that paves the way for future missions to the Moon and Mars."
Earlier, the company had stated, "Blue Ghost is ready to take the wheel! Flight controllers have just sent the command for Descent Orbit Insertion 9 hours ahead of time since this burn is performed on the far side of the Moon during a planned comms blackout. We expect to regain signal about 20 minutes after the burn to ensure Blue Ghost is on the right course."
Nicknamed "Ghost Riders in the Sky," the mission comes just over a year after the first-ever commercial lunar landing and is part of a NASA partnership with industry to cut costs and support Artemis, the program aiming to return astronauts to the Moon. It was launched on January 15 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and undertook a 45-day journey to reach Moon.
Blue Ghost carries ten instruments, including a lunar soil analyzer, a radiation-tolerant computer and an experiment testing the feasibility of using the existing global satellite navigation system to navigate the Moon, AFP reported.
Designed to operate for a full lunar day (14 Earth days), Blue Ghost is expected to capture high-definition imagery of a total eclipse on March 14, when Earth blocks the Sun from the Moon's horizon.
On March 16, it will record a lunar sunset, offering insights into how dust levitates above the surface under solar influence -- creating the mysterious lunar horizon glow first documented by Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan.
Blue Ghost's arrival will be followed on March 6 by Intuitive Machines' IM-2 mission, featuring its lander Athena.
Landing on the Moon presents unique challenges due to the absence of an atmosphere, making parachutes ineffective. Instead, spacecraft must rely on precisely controlled thruster burns to slow their descent.
Until Intuitive Machines' first successful mission, only five national space agencies had accomplished this feat: the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India and Japan, in that order.
Now, the United States is working to make private lunar missions routine through NASA's $2.6 billion Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
The missions come at a delicate moment for NASA, amid speculation that it may scale back or even cancel its Artemis lunar program in favor of prioritizing Mars exploration -- a key goal of both President Donald Trump and his close advisor, SpaceX founder Elon Musk, AFP reported.
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