Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 successfully landed on the Moon, marking only the second private lunar landing and the first upright. The spacecraft touched down near Mons Latreille on March 2, 2025, delivering 10 NASA scientific experiments to study the lunar environment and support future missions to the Moon and Mars. CEO Jason Kim confirmed the lander was stable, unlike the previous year’s sideways landing. Blue Ghost, launched on a Falcon 9 rocket, will operate for a lunar day and capture imagery of lunar events. NASA’s partnership with private companies aims to facilitate routine lunar missions amid potential changes to the Artemis program.
An American company successfully achieved a Moon landing with its spacecraft on Sunday following an extensive journey through space, marking the second private mission to reach this milestone, and the first to do so in an upright position.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 touched down shortly after 3:34 am US Eastern Time (0834 GMT) nearby Mons Latreille, a volcanic formation located in Mare Crisium on the Moon’s northeastern side.
“You all nailed the landing—we’re on the Moon,” an engineer at mission control in Austin, Texas, exclaimed, prompting a wave of cheers from the team.
We’re baaack! 🌕
Blue Ghost has landed, successfully delivering 10 NASA scientific investigations and tech demonstrations that will enhance our understanding of the lunar environment and aid future astronauts on the Moon and Mars. pic.twitter.com/guugFdsXY3
— NASA (@NASA) March 2, 2025
An initial image is anticipated soon. CEO Jason Kim later assured that the spacecraft was “stable and upright,” distinguishing it from the first private landing last February, which ended sideways.
“We’re on the Moon!” celebrated Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
Affectionately named “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” the mission is part of a NASA-industry partnership designed to reduce costs and support Artemis, the initiative aimed at returning astronauts to the Moon.
The golden lander, comparable in size to a hippopotamus, was launched on January 15 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, capturing breathtaking footage of Earth and the Moon during its journey. It shared the ride with a lander from a Japanese company, which is scheduled to attempt a landing in May.
Blue Ghost is equipped with 10 instruments, including a lunar soil analyzer, a radiation-resistant computer, and an experiment to test the potential of using existing global satellite navigation systems for lunar navigation.
Designed for operations over a full lunar day (14 Earth days), Blue Ghost is expected to capture high-definition images of a total eclipse on March 14, when Earth obscures the Sun from the Moon’s horizon.
On March 16, it will document a lunar sunset, providing insights into how dust levitates above the surface under solar influence, which creates the enigmatic lunar horizon glow first recorded by Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan.
Blue Ghost’s landing will be succeeded on March 6 by fellow Texas-based Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission, featuring its lander Athena.
In February 2024, Intuitive Machines made history as the first private company to achieve a soft lunar landing, also marking the first US landing since the crewed Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
However, this success was marred by an incident: the lander descended too rapidly and toppled over upon impact, preventing it from generating sufficient solar power and truncating the mission.
This time, the company claims to have implemented significant enhancements to the hexagon-shaped lander, which features a taller, slimmer design than Blue Ghost, towering at the height of an adult giraffe.
Athena launched on Wednesday aboard a SpaceX rocket, taking a more direct trajectory towards Mons Mouton—the southernmost lunar landing site ever pursued.
Its payloads consist of three rovers, a drill for ice exploration, and the highlight: an innovative hopping drone designed to traverse the Moon’s rugged landscape.
NASA’s private Moon fleet
Landing on the Moon introduces unique challenges due to the lack of an atmosphere, rendering parachutes ineffective.
Instead, spacecraft must depend on meticulously controlled thruster burns to reduce their descent speed.
Until the successful mission of Intuitive Machines, only five national space agencies had successfully completed this task: the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India, and Japan, in that order.
Now, the United States is actively working to normalize private lunar missions through NASA’s $2.6 billion Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
These missions unfold at a critical time for NASA, amidst speculation that it may downsize or even terminate its Artemis lunar program in favor of focusing on Mars exploration—a primary objective of both President Donald Trump and his close advisor, SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)