A Private Space Mission Just Successfully Landed on the Moon for the First Time

With its Blue Ghost lunar module, Texas-based Firefly Aerospace has conscionable achieved what nary different backstage company, anyplace successful the world, has ever accomplished: successfully landing connected the aboveground of the moon.

Having launched in January, the Blue Ghost Mission 1 touched down astatine Mare Crisium, successful the vicinity of a upland called Mons Latreille, astatine 3:34 americium Eastern Time connected Sunday March 2. NASA reports that the Blue Ghost lander is successful a stable, vertical position.

“This unthinkable accomplishment demonstrates however NASA and US companies are starring the mode successful abstraction exploration for the payment of all,” Janet Petro, NASA’s acting administrator, said successful a statement connected March 2. “We person already learned galore lessons, and the exertion and subject demonstrations aboard Firefly’s Blue Ghost 1 Mission volition heighten our quality to not lone observe much subject but besides to guarantee the information of the instruments connected our spacecraft for aboriginal quality exploration, some adjacent and agelong term.”

Blue Ghost is not the archetypal privately led ngo to scope the lunar surface. That grant goes to Intuitive Machines, different Texas-based company, which attempted to onshore connected the satellite successful February 2024; however, its module fell onto its broadside connected the aboveground and ceased to beryllium operational. (Intuitive Machines volition get different accidental connected March 6, with its Athena lunar module, which launched past month.) Other companies person besides tried, but their spacecraft ended up crashing.

Firefly’s lander inactive has plentifulness of enactment up of it. The Blue Ghost module is carrying 10 subject and exertion instruments for NASA, which volition run connected the aboveground for 1 lunar day, the equivalent of 14 days connected Earth. As portion of the NASA’s Artemis program, which volition instrumentality humans to the lunar aboveground for the archetypal clip since 1972, Blue Ghost’s ngo aims to larn much astir the lunar environment, to enactment astronauts successful aboriginal explorations of the satellite and Mars. Moments aft touchdown, the module captured its archetypal images, which were shared by NASA and Firefly connected their authoritative accounts.