By BlueShift and AFP | 2025-03-03

WASHINGTON -- A private US company landed its spacecraft on the Moon on March 2, marking only the second private mission to achieve the milestone -- and the first to do so upright.

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1 touched down at 3.34am US Eastern Time near Mons Latreille, a volcanic formation in Mare Crisium on the Moon's northeastern near side.

The mission control team in Austin, Texas, erupted in cheers as CEO Jason Kim confirmed that the spacecraft was "stable and upright."

That triumph stood in stark contrast to the first private lunar landing last February, which toppled over upon arrival, dulling the achievement of being the first US Moon touchdown since the crewed Apollo 17 mission of 1972.

"We're on the Moon!" exclaimed Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

"The science and technology we send to the Moon now helps prepare the way for future NASA exploration and long-term human presence to inspire the world for generations to come," she said in a statement posted by NASA.

"We're sending these payloads by working with American companies -- which supports a growing lunar economy."

Lessons learned

Blue Ghost's program manager, Ray Allensworth, highlighted the precision of the landing, noting it touched down within 100 meters of its target.

"We did do two hazard avoidance maneuvers on the way down -- that tells us that our software did work exactly as it needed to," she told reporters.

The first image from the lander revealed rugged, pockmarked terrain that Blue Ghost had to autonomously navigate during its final descent, slowing from thousands of kilometers per hour to just 3.2km/h.

"This incredible achievement demonstrates how NASA and American companies are leading the way in space exploration for the benefit of all," said NASA acting Administrator Janet Petro.

"We have already learned many lessons -- and the technological and science demonstrations onboard Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 1 will improve our ability to not only discover more science, but to ensure the safety of our spacecraft instruments for future human exploration -- both in the short term and long term."

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, 95, joined the celebration from home, posting a video of himself in pajamas, beaming and flashing a thumbs-up at the webcast.

"Congratulations FireFly Aerospace for Blue Ghost's Mission 1 successful Moon landing today!" Aldrin said on X. "It also marks a new milestone in the collaborations between NASA and private Space companies, as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program."

NASA experiments

Nicknamed "Ghost Riders in the Sky," the mission is part of a $2.6 billion NASA partnership with CLPS, which aims to cut costs and support Artemis, the program designed to return astronauts to the Moon.

The golden lander -- about the size of a hippopotamus -- launched on January 15 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, capturing spectacular footage of Earth and the Moon over its 4.5-million-km-long journey.

It shared the ride with the Resilience lunar lander from Japanese company ispace aiming for its own touchdown in May.

Blue Ghost carries 10 instruments, including a lunar soil analyzer, a radiation-tolerant computer and an experiment testing the feasibility of using the existing global satellite navigation system to navigate the Moon.

Designed to operate for a full lunar day (14 Earth days), Blue Ghost is expected to capture high-definition imagery of a total eclipse on March 14, when Earth blocks the Sun from the Moon's horizon.

On March 16, it will record a lunar sunset, offering insights into how dust levitates above the surface under solar influence -- creating the mysterious lunar horizon glow first documented by Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan.

Another lander coming

Blue Ghost will be followed on March 6 by fellow Texas-based Intuitive Machines' IM-2 mission, featuring its lander, Athena.

During the company's first mission in February 2024, the lander touched down too fast, snagging a foot on the surface and toppling over, cutting operations short.

Intuitive Machines says it has since made key improvements to the hexagonal vehicle, which has a taller, slimmer profile than Blue Ghost and is roughly the height of a giraffe.

Athena aims to touch down farther south on the Moon than any previous mission, and its payloads include three rovers, a drill to search for ice and the star of the show: a first-of-its-kind hopping drone.

Landing on the Moon is uniquely challenging because of its lack of atmosphere, making parachutes useless. Instead, spacecraft must rely on precisely controlled thruster burns to slow their descent while maneuvering over hazardous terrain.

Until Intuitive Machines' first mission, only five national space agencies had accomplished this feat: those of the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India and Japan, in that order.