US group Firefly Aerospace has arguably secured a place in the space exploration history books with its 2 March soft-landing on the Moon’s surface – the first such attempt by a commercial company to have been successful.
The Blue Ghost lunar lander completed the landing at 8.34am GMT, within a basaltic plain known as Mare Crisium.
Shock-absorbing legs were used to stabilize the vehicle as it touched down, and inertial readings confirmed that it remained in a stable, upright position. In that respect the mission steals a march on Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander’s attempt in February 2024, which left the vehicle in a tipped-up position, compromising its full capabilities.
This latest attempt by Firefly is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
Carrying 10 NASA instruments, the lander will be conducting a range of surface operations including lunar subsurface drilling, sample collection, X-ray imaging, and dust mitigation experiments. On 14 March, it is expected to capture high-definition imagery of a total eclipse when the Earth blocks the sun above the Moon’s horizon. On 16 March, Blue Ghost will then capture the lunar sunset, providing data on how lunar dust levitates due to solar influences and creates a lunar horizon glow (as first documented by Eugene Cernan on Apollo 17). Following the sunset, Blue Ghost will operate several hours into the lunar night and continue to capture imagery that observes how levitating dust behaviour changes after the sunset.
Shea Ferring, Chief Technology Officer at Firefly Aerospace, commented: “Just through transit to the Moon, Firefly’s mission has already delivered the most science data to date for the NASA CLPS nitiative. CLPS has played a key role in Firefly’s evolution from a rocket company to a provider of launch, lunar, and on-orbit services from LEO to cislunar and beyond. We want to thank NASA for entrusting in the Firefly team, and we look forward to delivering even more science data that supports future human missions to the Moon and Mars.”
Throughout its 45-day journey to the Moon, Blue Ghost traveled more than 2.8 million miles, downlinked more than 27 GB of data, and supported several payload science operations. This included signal tracking from the Global Navigation Satellite System at a record-breaking distance with the LuGRE payload, radiation tolerant computing through the Van Allen Belts with the RadPC payload, and measurements of magnetic field changes with the LMS payload.
