Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander successfully touches down on the moon

By Jackie Wattles, Mar 2: An uncrewed spacecraft developed in the United States has successfully soft-landed on the moon, making Texas-based Firefly Aerospace only the second private-sector company ever to complete such a feat.

Firefly’s 6.6-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down on the moon’s near side at 2:34 a.m. CT (3:34 a.m. ET) Sunday.

A parade of lunar landers developed by the private sector was launched this year, part of a convoy of robotic spacecraft that NASA and its partner agencies hope will pave the way for astronauts to return to the moon’s surface later this decade.

Success was far from guaranteed. In February 2023, another Texas-based space company, Intuitive Machines, became the first private-sector company to soft-land a vehicle on the moon, but broadly speaking, about half of all lunar landing attempts have ended in failure.

“Thank you to everybody for their support, and I would also particularly like to thank the Firefly team,” said NASA’s acting chief Janet Petro. “Earlier today, I was talking to (Firefly CEO Jason Kim) and he was talking about his team of people … I can tell you they are motivated, they are dedicated, they’re relentless. They have persevered.”

The mission landed near an ancient volcanic feature called Mons Latreille, which lies on the far eastern edge of the moon’s visible face just north of the equator.

The team chose the site because “it avoids large magnetic anomalies — (or interruptions) — on the lunar surface that could disrupt some of our payload measurements,” said Ryan Watkins, the program scientist for NASA’s Exploration Science Strategy and Integration Office, during a December briefing.

While the lander touched down during the middle of the night for North America, lunar daytime is just rising at Blue Ghost’s landing site.

“That’s when the sun rises at our landing site in Mare Crisium, and we want to take full advantage of the entire lunar day (14 Earth days) when we have sunlight to operate our 10 payloads,” said Risa Schnautz, Firefly’s director of marketing and communications in an email to CNN.

Blue Ghost’s suite of science equipment

Blue Ghost comes equipped with 10 science instruments and technology demonstrations from NASA, some of which already began collecting data as the lunar lander traversed the roughly 239,000-mile (384,400-kilometer) void between Earth and the moon.

The equipment includes a device that’s testing out how GPS services might be used in orbit and on the lunar surface, a vacuum that will aim to suck up soil, and a telescope that will observe how Earth’s protective magnetic field, also known as the magnetosphere, responds to space weather.

Firefly is also expecting the spacecraft to deliver stunning images from its landing site.

During its 14 days of operations on the moon, Blue Ghost will photograph an eclipse, during which Earth will block the sun’s rays from the moon’s surface for about five hours. The vehicle is also expected to snap pictures of a phenomenon last witnessed by astronauts more than 50 years ago.

“There’s a phenomenon called the lunar horizon glow (scattered light caused by floating electrostatic particles) that only the Apollo 15 and 17 astronauts have seen with their eyes,” Jason Kim, Firefly’s CEO, told CNN in a previous interview. “We’re going to be able to capture that in 4K-by-4K high-definition video and share that with the rest of the world.”

Firefly’s Blue Ghost will also continue collecting data for several hours into lunar night — when brutally cold conditions thrust the landing zone near Mons Latreille into shadow and temperatures could drop to as cold as minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 173 degrees Celsius).

The fall of lunar night has typically spelled the end for lunar landers. But NASA wants Blue Ghost to go for it. The space agency even upped the value of the contract it’s paying to Firefly — from $93 million to $101 million — in part so that the company could prepare the lander to survive such frigid temperatures, Kim said.

The Blue Ghost lander is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative.

The program is a concerted effort by the space agency to encourage the private sector to develop lunar landers in the hopes that their robotic exploration will pave the way for astronauts to return to the moon for the first time in 50 years under the Artemis program.

There are 14 companies currently able to bid on CLPS contracts, which provide money to carry out lunar landings. So far, two companies — Astrobotic Technology and Intuitive Machines — have attempted missions, but only the latter has managed a soft touchdown.

Astrobotic’s first mission last year failed shortly after reaching orbit because of propulsion issues. And while Intuitive Machines’ mission was largely successful, its lander tipped over on its side, limiting the length of time it was able to operate.

Two other private-sector vehicles are making their own approaches. Intuitive Machines’ second lander launched Wednesday and is heading for the moon’s south pole region. And a lander built by Japan-based company Ispace, which launched alongside Blue Ghost in January, will attempt a soft landing this spring — an effort to redeem the company’s failed first attempt in 2023.