With its Blue Ghost lunar module, Texas-based Firefly Aerospace has simply achieved what no different non-public firm, anyplace on this planet, has ever completed: efficiently touchdown on the floor of the moon.
Having launched in January, the Blue Ghost Mission 1 touched down at Mare Crisium, within the neighborhood of a mountain known as Mons Latreille, at 3:34 am Jap Time on Sunday March 2. NASA stories that the Blue Ghost lander is in a steady, vertical place.
“This unbelievable achievement demonstrates how NASA and US firms are main the best way in house exploration for the good thing about all,” Janet Petro, NASA’s appearing administrator, stated in a statement on March 2. “We have now already realized many classes, and the expertise and science demonstrations aboard Firefly’s Blue Ghost 1 Mission will improve our capability to not solely uncover extra science but additionally to make sure the protection of the devices on our spacecraft for future human exploration, each close to and long run.”
Blue Ghost isn’t the primary privately led mission to achieve the lunar floor. That honor goes to Intuitive Machines, one other Texas-based firm, which tried to land on the moon in February 2024; nonetheless, its module fell onto its aspect on the floor and ceased to be operational. (Intuitive Machines will get one other probability on March 6, with its Athena lunar module, which launched final month.) Different firms have additionally tried, however their spacecraft ended up crashing.
Firefly’s lander nonetheless has loads of work forward of it. The Blue Ghost module is carrying 10 science and expertise devices for NASA, which can function on the floor for one lunar day, the equal of 14 days on Earth. As a part of the NASA’s Artemis program, which can return people to the lunar floor for the primary time since 1972, Blue Ghost’s mission goals to study extra in regards to the lunar surroundings, to help astronauts in future explorations of the moon and Mars. Moments after landing, the module captured its first photographs, which had been shared by NASA and Firefly on their official accounts.
