Firefly’s Blue Ghost nails its Moon landing

Blue Ghost, a lunar lander built by Texas-based space startup Firefly, early yesterday pulled a Simone Biles and stuck its landing on the Moon.

With the successful touchdown, the 10-year-old Firefly becomes the first private outfit to put a spacecraft on the lunar surface without it crashing or falling over.

• Intuitive, another space company, reached the Moon with one of its crafts in February 2024, but it toppled over upon landing.

NASA🤝 private companies

En route to its destination, Blue Ghost, named after a rare US species of firefly, snapped some pretty sweet photos. But now its work starts; while on the lunar surface, the robotic craft will be carrying out 10 separate experiments for NASA.

If it seems like a lot…that’s because Blue Ghost’s payload is the largest to date under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program (CLPS), a $2.6 billion initiative created to finance lower-cost methods of delivering cargo to the Moon without the agency needing to build its own spacecraft, as it historically has done.

These data-gathering missions are seen as pivotal to lay the groundwork for NASA's future Moon and Mars missions carrying actual astronauts.

👀 Looking ahead: The Moon’s about to get more crowded than a wedding dance floor after the “Cha Cha Slide” comes on. Intuitive is prepping for a Round 2 later this week, while Japanese company ispace is planning for its already en-route lunar lander to touch down in June.