Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lunar landed touched down on the surface of the moon March 2, a key milestone for the company and NASA’s lunar exploration efforts.
The spacecraft touched down at 3:34 a.m. Eastern, a little more than an hour after it started maneuvers to descend from a low orbit around the moon. The company said the lander was in an “upright, stable” position.
“We have confirmation #BlueGhost stuck the landing!” the company announced on social media just after touchdown. “This small step on the Moon represents a giant leap in commercial exploration. Congratulations to the entire Firefly team, our mission partners, and our @NASA customers for this incredible feat that paves the way for future missions to the Moon and Mars.”
“Everything was as planned. You could see everything was within margins,” Jason Kim, chief executive of Firefly Aerospace, said at a post-landing briefing. “From my observation, the team just nailed it.”
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“It really did go according to plan,” Ray Allensworth, spacecraft program director at Firefly, said at the briefing, not requiring mission controllers to implement any contingency plans. She said the landing was within a 100-meter ellipse designated for the mission, but did not immediately have more details on the accuracy of the landing.
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Firefly said it was “the first commercial company in history to achieve a fully successful Moon landing.” Intuitive Machines landed its IM-1 lander on the moon in February 2024, but the spacecraft suffered a hard landing and tipped on its side, although it was still able to operate and return data for a week. ...