In the early hours of March 2, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost successfully soft-landed on the moon. This historic moon landing mission made Blue Moon the second private spacecraft to ever land on the moon.
The sophisticated lander took 10 science equipment to the moon to conduct different experiments on the lunar surface for NASA. Upon landing, the lander captured the first image, which showed Earth glowing amazingly over the dark skies of the moon. NASA officials celebrated the historic touchdown while making the landing webcast.
How Blue Ghost Landed on the Moon
On January 15, 2025, the Blue Ghost spacecraft was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a Falcon 9 rocket. After traveling for 2.8 million miles, the spacecraft arrived at the lunar orbit and descended towards the lunar surface. The landing procedure commenced earlier today, (March 2nd), around 2:30 a.m. EST (0730 GMT).
At that exact time, the lander fired its thruster engines and headed for a descent orbit insertion burn. Before making this burn, the spacecraft has been moving around the lunar orbit approximately around 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the lunar surface. Hence, the insertion burn put the lander on the perfect course to make a soft landing on the lunar surface.
After the first firing, the lander shut its thruster and remained navigated carefully for about 50 minutes. After that, it fired its thrusters for the second time to lower its orbital velocity and carefully placed its body above the targeted soft landing area.
NASA planned this area to lie within the region of Mare Crisum (“Sea of Crises”), which is a volcanic base that exists on the side of the moon facing Earth. Hence, nine minutes after the second burn, the spacecraft turned off its main engine and entered the terminal guidance phase, which enrolled it into the touchdown process.
The Blue Ghost proceeded to ignite its small reaction control system thrusters to make the landing much easier. As it passes through all these processes, the lander continues heading toward its targeted landing site. The spacecraft successfully executed all tasks at the given time and finally made a soft landing at the planned landing site at 3:34 a.m. EST (0834 GMT).
What The Spacecraft Will Do On The Lunar Surface
After Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander safely touched down on the lunar surface in February 2024, no other American spacecraft has reached the moon. However, Blue Ghost spacecraft broke the record early this morning by becoming the second American spacecraft to land on the moon after the last Apollo 17 crewed landing in December 1972.
Firefly Aerospace built the Blue Ghost lander to be about 6.6 feet (3 meters) in height and about 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) wide. Firefly Aerospace derived their inspiration from several sources to build the powerful space vehicle. NASA awarded Firefly a $93 million contract to build NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) Program.
The American Space Agency was planning to transport its science equipment to the moon aboard the private moon landers which will be built by Firefly. The primary object of the CLPS is to obtain data about the moon’s environment and help prepare NASA for the safe landing of its Artemis astronauts in 2027.
Hence, as Blue Ghost traveled to the moon, it carried 10 NASA payloads to conduct several experiments on the moon. Some of these instruments will study the level of radiation at lunar landing sites.
NASA will use the data obtained from this testing to study more effective ways to obtain samples of moon rock and debris. In addition, as more update emerges from this safe touchdown, we will continue to update you.
