Firefly Aerospace, an American company, successfully made a soft landing on the moon on its first attempt. The spacecraft, named Blue Ghost and roughly the size of a compact car, landed in the area of the ancient volcanic gerlo in the Sea of Crises, a vast plain on the northeast part of the visible side of the moon.
During the historic moment at 3:35 AM in the Eastern United States time zone, the flight control center in Austin was filled with silence as employees held their breath, watching Blue Ghost approach the lunar surface at a speed of about three kilometers per hour. The chief engineer, Will Kugan, confirmed the spacecraft’s entry into lunar gravity and soon after announced a successful landing.
This achievement by Firefly Aerospace marks the second successful private mission to the moon, with the first by the ODYSSEUS device from Intuitive Machines last year, which experienced an uneven landing resulting in malfunctions of scientific devices on board.
Prior to this successful landing, only five countries had accomplished a soft landing on the moon: the Soviet Union, the USA, China, India, and Japan. The US and China are now gearing up to send astronauts to the moon, with planned crew landings in 2027 and 2030 respectively.
Blue Ghost’s journey was not without challenges, as the spacecraft traveled roughly 4.5 million kilometers, making three ground runs before finally reaching the moon at a distance of 383,000 kilometers from Earth after launching from the Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX rocket.
Equipped with ten scientific devices powered by three solar panels, Blue Ghost will conduct research on the composition of lunar soil and subsurface temperatures for two weeks before the lunar night sets in with temperatures dropping to as low as minus 173 degrees Celsius. The mission will also involve data analysis of dust clouds raised during landing to aid in predicting regolith behavior for future expeditions.
Blue Ghost’s mission is part of three ongoing lunar programs. Ispace from Japan launched its second landing module in January and Intuitive Machines is making a second attempt to land on the moon. This project falls under the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative with a cost of $101 million aimed at fostering private sector development in lunar exploration and reducing future flight costs.