A landmark moment in private space travel has been reached after Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander successfully touched down on the moon.
The four-legged spacecraft, roughly the size of a compact car, carried 10 scientific payloads and used 21 thrusters to navigate its way to a landing near a volcanic vent on Mare Crisium, in the northeast of the moon’s Earth-facing side.
The Blue Ghost lander is equipped with a vacuum to collect debris for analysis, as well as a drill capable of measuring temperatures up to 10 feet beneath the lunar surface, Sky News reports.
Additionally, the craft features a mechanism to destroy lunar dust, which has long been an issue on the moon’s surface. The dust was a persistent problem for NASA’s Apollo astronauts, coating their spacesuits and equipment during previous missions.
The mission has been assisted by NASA. Dr Nicola Fox, from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said: “We choose our landing sites very carefully.
“We want to study the geological features on the moon. We want to study the interaction with the solar wind.”
She added that the mission will help shape the course of future space exploration and support “future astronauts” in their journeys to the moon. One of NASA’s ambitions, she said, is to establish “a sustainable commercial lunar economy and have it led by American companies”.
It is expected that Blue Ghost will gather data for around two weeks before lunar daytime ends, at which point the lander will cease to operate.
The spacecraft was launched in January and made headlines after achieving a smooth landing. Firefly is the first private firm to complete a successful moon landing and only the second to achieve a soft touchdown, following Houston-based Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander, which landed lopsided last year.
Dr Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator at NASA, described the voyage as “one for the history books” but noted that the landing site was “a very achievable place to land”.
Five countries have previously completed moon landings through their national space agencies—the then-Soviet Union, the US, China, India, and Japan.
The modern moon race is increasingly driven by private enterprise, supported by NASA’s Artemis moon programme. Firefly is one of three ongoing lunar missions and received $101m (£80.3m) from NASA for delivery, along with an additional $44m (£35m) for onboard science and technology.
The other two missions are led by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which both plan to send US astronauts to the moon in 2027—the first time since 1972.
Dr Fox stated that NASA plans to support two private moon landings annually. In recent decades, dozens of failed missions have left substantial spacecraft wreckage on the moon’s surface.
