Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost becomes second commercial spacecraft to soft-land on the moon
Mar 3, 2025
Key Points
- Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost soft-landed on the moon on March 3, 2025, marking only the second US lunar landing since Apollo 17 and the second commercial spacecraft to reach the surface.
- Blue Ghost carries 10 NASA experiments including a drill capable of reaching 3 meters below the surface and a magnetotelluric sounder to probe over 1,000 kilometers into the moon's interior.
- Firefly executed the mission with minimal public fanfare, landing at 3 a.m. Eastern time with no advance notice, contrasting sharply with typical aerospace industry hype campaigns.
Summary
Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander touched down on the moon on March 3, 2025, at Mare Crisium after a 45-day journey and a semi-autonomous one-hour descent. The landing marks only the second US soft-landing on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. The first commercial soft-landing came from Intuitive Machines just over a year ago.
Blue Ghost carries 10 NASA experiments as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, a public-private partnership designed to reduce costs by enlisting multiple US firms to ferry cargo tied to NASA's Artemis program. Two instruments stand out. LISST is a drill capable of reaching 3 meters below the lunar surface to measure heat flow and understand how the moon cooled. LMS is a magnetotelluric sounder that will place electrodes across 700 square meters of terrain to probe more than 1,000 kilometers into the moon's interior.
Firefly operated with minimal public fanfare. The lander landed at 3 a.m. Eastern time with no advance notice. Unlike typical aerospace companies that stage elaborate countdowns, merchandise drops, and documentaries, Firefly executed the mission in near-total silence. Intuitive Machines' earlier landing also received surprisingly little media coverage.
Two other commercial spacecraft are expected to reach the moon soon, including Hakuto-R Mission 2, which launched alongside Blue Ghost on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in mid-January.