Blue Ghost, an unmanned spacecraft sent by the Texas-based Firefly Aerospace, has just landed on the moon.
The lunar landing occurred on Sunday, marking the second-ever time a private company landed on the moon. Blue Ghost arrived at 8:34am GMT on the moon’s Earth-facing side by an ancient volcanic formation in Mare Crisium known as Mons Latreille.
Blue Ghost’s 2.8 million mile journey began on January 15 when it launched onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Blue Ghost’s moon landing marks just the second time ever that a private U.S. company has completed such a mission. It also marks the second time a U.S. spacecraft had landed on the moon since 1972, with the touch down of the manned Apollo 17 mission.
The first in both those categories came from the company Intuitive Machines, which completed the first private moon landing in February of 2024.
However, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost achieved something that Intuitive Machines failed at. When the latter landed on the moon last year, the spacecraft toppled over. Blue Ghost, however, did not. Firefly Aerospace’s spacecraft landed upright.
According to the Guardian, the Firefly crew “erupted in cheers” upon the company’s CEO Jason Kim announcing that Blue Ghost was “stable and upright”.
Blue Ghost was launched as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. NASA aims to cut costs using spacecrafts created in the private sector in order to support its Artemis mission, which looks to once again land astronauts on the moon sometime by the end of the decade.
NASA equipped the lunar lander with nearly a dozen scientific instruments and experiments, such as a lunar soil analyzer and a test to check if existing satellite navigation systems can be used to navigate the moon. Blue Ghost will also document and photograph an eclipse.
Two other private companies currently have lunar landers en route to the moon, one of which is from Intuitive Machines as it tries again for an upright landing.
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The Blue Ghost has landed on the moon, stable and upright, according to Firefly Aerospace.
