Firefly Aerospace’s commercial Blue Ghost lander delivers NASA tech to the moon

WASHINGTON - Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 landed on the Moon at 3:34 a.m. EST on Sunday, touching down near Mons Latreille in Mare Crisium, a basin more than 300 miles wide on the Moon’s near side. The mission marks Firefly’s first lunar landing and its first delivery under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

The Blue Ghost lander is upright and stable. It carries 10 NASA science and technology instruments, which will operate on the lunar surface for approximately 14 Earth days, or one lunar day, as part of NASA’s Artemis campaign.

"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."

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Since its launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on 15 January, Blue Ghost has traveled over 2.8 million miles, downlinked more than 27 gigabytes of data, and supported various scientific operations. A prominent experiment, the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment, tracked signals from Earth’s Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) at a record distance of 246,000 miles, showcasing the potential for GPS-based navigation in deep space. Other experiments investigated radiation-tolerant computing through the Van Allen Belts and measured changes in the magnetic field using the Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder.

"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," said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We're sending these payloads by working with American companies, which supports a growing lunar economy."

The NASA instruments will test lunar drilling technology, regolith sampling, dust mitigation methods, and radiation-tolerant computing during surface operations. Scientists will also observe how lunar dust reacts to solar influences at dusk, a phenomenon first documented by Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan.