Blue Ghost Mission 1 was a robotic

Moon landing A Moon landing or lunar landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon, including both crewed and robotic missions. The first human-made object to touch the Moon was Luna 2 in 1959. In 1969 Apollo 11 was the first cr ...

mission by

Firefly Aerospace Firefly Aerospace, Inc. is an American private aerospace firm based in Cedar Park, Texas, that develops small- and medium-lift launch vehicles for commercial launches to orbit. The current company was formed when the assets of the former co ...

that launched on January 15, 2025, and successfully soft-landed on the lunar surface on March 2, 2025, at 08:34

UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...

. With this achievement, Firefly Aerospace became the first commercial company to complete a fully successful soft landing on the Moon (In February 2024, Intuitive Machines’

IM-1 IM-1 was a robotic Moon landing mission conducted by Intuitive Machines (IM) in February 2024 using a Intuitive Machines Nova-C, Nova-C lunar lander. After contact with the lunar surface on February 22 the lander tipped to an unplanned 30 de ...

became the first commercial mission to successfully soft-land on the Moon but the lander tipped to an unplanned 30 degree angle after touchdown). As part of

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

Commercial Lunar Payload Services Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) is a NASA program to hire companies to send small robotic landers and rovers to the Moon. Most landing sites are near the lunar south pole where they will scout for lunar resources, test in situ resource ...

program, the mission delivered ten scientific and technological experiments to advance future human exploration under the

Artemis program The Artemis program is a Exploration of the Moon, Moon exploration program led by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), formally established in 2017 via Space Policy Directive 1. The program's stated long-ter ...

. Approximately 5 hours after sunset at the end of the lunar day on March 16, 2025, the solar-powered lander's batteries depleted, communications were lost, and end of the spacecraft's mission was officially declared at 23:25 UTC. The Blue Ghost

lunar lander A lunar lander or Moon lander is a Lander (spacecraft), spacecraft designed to Moon landing, land on the surface of the Moon. As of 2024, the Apollo Lunar Module is the only lunar lander to have ever been used in human spaceflight, completing s ...

was launched from

Kennedy Space Center The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten NASA facilities#List of field c ...

aboard a

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

Falcon 9 Block 5 Falcon 9 Block 5 is a Reusable launch system#Partial reusable launch systems, partially reusable, human-rating certification, human-rated, two-stage-to-orbit, medium-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured in the United States by SpaceX. I ...

rocket that also carried the

Hakuto-R Mission 2 Hakuto-R Mission 2, also called ''Resilience'', was a robotic Moon landing , lunar landing mission launched on 15 January 2025. Developed by the Japanese company Ispace (Japanese company), ispace, the lander was intended to deliver a small Rover ...

lander. It delivered 10 payloads to

Mare Crisium Mare Crisium (Latin ''crisium'', the "Sea of Crises") is a lunar mare located in the Moon's Crisium basin, just northeast of Mare Tranquillitatis. Mare Crisium is a basin of Nectarian age. It was formed by the flooding of basaltic lava that fill ...

, a lunar basin. Its 60-day mission aimed to analyze lunar

regolith Regolith () is a blanket of unconsolidated, loose, heterogeneous superficial deposits covering solid rock. It includes dust, broken rocks, and other related materials and is present on Earth, the Moon, Mars, some asteroids, and other terrestria ...

, study geophysical characteristics, and investigate interactions between the

solar wind The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the Sun's outermost atmospheric layer, the Stellar corona, corona. This Plasma (physics), plasma mostly consists of electrons, protons and alpha particles with kinetic energy betwee ...

and

Earth's magnetic field Earth's magnetic field, also known as the geomagnetic field, is the magnetic field that extends from structure of Earth, Earth's interior out into space, where it interacts with the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emanating from ...

. The lander's scientific payloads included a regolith adherence characterization experiment, a lunar

retroreflector A retroreflector (sometimes called a retroflector or cataphote) is a device or surface that reflects light or other radiation back to its source with minimum scattering. This works at a wide range of angle of incidence (optics), angle of incidenc ...

for precision distance measurements, a radiation-tolerant computer, thermal exploration probes, and more.

Mission

On February 4, 2021,

awarded Firefly a contract worth US$93.3 million to deliver a suite of ten science investigations and technology demonstrations to the Moon in 2023. The award was part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, in which NASA is securing the service of commercial partners to quickly land science and technology payloads on the lunar surface as part of the

. On May 20, 2021, Firefly Aerospace announced its selection of

as the launch vehicle for the inaugural Blue Ghost lunar lander mission. This decision was made due to the Falcon 9's performance and payload capacity, which Firefly's

Alpha Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter ''aleph'' , whose name comes from the West Semitic word for ' ...

rocket could not provide. The company indicated that its future Medium Launch Vehicle would support subsequent Blue Ghost missions. Development milestones for the Blue Ghost lander progressed steadily over the following years. On April 26, 2022, Firefly completed the Integration Readiness Review for the lander, with a tentative launch date set for 2024. In November 2023, Firefly refined the schedule, specifying a launch window between the third and fourth quarters of 2024. By May 2024, the Nammo UK LEROS 4-ET engines for Blue Ghost were completed, and their integration into the lander was confirmed in June. Firefly announced that preparations were proceeding as planned, with the company reaffirming a Q4 2024 launch target in July. Environmental testing of the lander commenced in August at NASA's

Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in La Cañada Flintridge, California, Crescenta Valley, United States. Founded in 1936 by Cali ...

(JPL), ensuring the spacecraft's readiness for the rigors of spaceflight. In November 2024, Firefly Aerospace formally announced that the Blue Ghost lander was fully prepared for launch, setting a mid-January 2025 launch date. Payload encapsulation was completed on January 10, marking one of the final steps in the pre-launch sequence. On January 15, 2025, the Blue Ghost lander successfully launched from

Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) is the first of Launch Complex 39's three launch pads, located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida. The pad, along with Launch Complex 39B, was built in the 1960s to accommodate the Saturn V l ...

at 06:11:39

(1:11:39 a.m. EST, local time at the launch site) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket. The mission also included

as a co-manifested payload. The spacecraft orbited Earth for 25 days, before performing a

Trans-lunar injection A trans-lunar injection (TLI) is a propulsive maneuver, which is used to send a spacecraft to the Moon. Typical lunar transfer trajectories approximate Hohmann transfers, although low-energy transfers have also been used in some cases, as with ...

maneuver, followed four days later by a Lunar orbit insertion burn to capture into lunar orbit. After a further 16 day days in lunar orbit, on March 2, 2025, at 2:34 a.m. CST, the spacecraft performed a powered descent and successfully landed on the lunar surface, northwest of Mons Latreille. Firefly Aerospace thus became the first commercial company to execute a fully successful soft-landing of a spacecraft on the Moon. As intended, the mission lasted approximately 14 Earth days, one

lunar day A lunar day is the time it takes for Earth's Moon to complete on its axis one synodic rotation, meaning with respect to the Sun. Informally, a lunar day and a lunar night is each approximately 14 Earth days. The formal lunar day is therefore t ...

, until the lunar sunset brings temperatures as low as . Three solar panels powered the lander's research instruments and

Spacecraft bus A satellite bus (or spacecraft bus) is the main body and structural component of a satellite or spacecraft, in which the payload and all scientific instruments are held. Bus-derived satellites are less customized than specially-produced satelli ...

during that time.

Hardware

Blue Ghost featured in-house manufactured composite decks, struts, landing legs, and footpads. Its thermal control system used a combination of heaters, temperature sensors, and

Multi-layer insulation Multi-layer insulation (MLI) is thermal insulation composed of multiple layers of thin sheets and is often used on spacecraft and cryogenics. Also referred to as superinsulation, MLI is one of the main items of the spacecraft thermal design, pri ...

. The onboard avionics and batteries were designed and built by Firefly, while the solar panels from subcontractor SolAero By

Rocket Lab Rocket Lab Corporation is a Public company, publicly traded aerospace manufacturer and List of launch service providers, launch service provider. Its Rocket Lab Electron, Electron orbital rocket launches Small satellite, small satellites, and ha ...

provide a maximum of 400

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...

s of power. ASI by Rocket Lab provided ground and flight software, trajectory design, orbit determination, and software testbed integration. Blue Ghost featured a Nammo LEROS-4 main engine, eight smaller Firefly Spectre biprop thrusters, and four sets of Firefly cold-gas

Attitude control system Spacecraft attitude control is the process of controlling the orientation of a spacecraft (vehicle or satellite) with respect to an inertial frame of reference or another entity such as the celestial sphere, certain fields, and nearby objects, ...

thrusters. The spacecraft featured both

S band The S band is a designation by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for a part of the microwave band of the electromagnetic spectrum covering frequencies from 2 to 4 gigahertz (GHz). Thus it crosses the conventiona ...

and

X band The X band is the designation for a band of frequencies in the microwave radio region of the electromagnetic spectrum. In some cases, such as in communication engineering, the frequency range of the X band is set at approximately 7.0–11.2&nbs ...

radios and communicated with

Swedish Space Corporation The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), also registered as Svenska rymdaktiebolaget, is a Swedish space services company. SSC operations consist of launches of sounding rockets and stratospheric balloons, tests of future generation rocket engines a ...

ground stations over the course of the mission. Two Firefly gimbals provided pointing for the X-band antenna, LuGRE antenna, LEXI telescope, and NGLR

Retroreflector A retroreflector (sometimes called a retroflector or cataphote) is a device or surface that reflects light or other radiation back to its source with minimum scattering. This works at a wide range of angle of incidence (optics), angle of incidenc ...

. Firefly also performed vehicle integration in its

Cedar Park, Texas Cedar Park is a city and a suburb of Austin, Texas, Austin in the U.S. state of Texas, approximately northwest of the center of Austin. According to the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, the city's population was 77,595, and in 2022 ...

cleanroom facility and, following integration, at the

Thermal vacuum chamber A thermal vacuum chamber (TVAC) is a vacuum chamber in which the radiative thermal environment is controlled. Typically the thermal environment is achieved by passing liquids or fluids through thermal shrouds for cold temperatures or through the ...

. Firefly asserts that its in-house end-to-end manufacturing and testing of the Blue Ghost structure is a differentiator among the CLPS landers.

Payloads

The mission landed at

, a basin visible from Earth. The lander's scientific instruments collected data on the properties of the Moon's

—its loose, fragmented rock and soil—as well as its geophysical characteristics and the interactions between the

and

. These findings will contribute to the preparation and planning of future human missions to the lunar surface. The payloads, collectively totaling about in mass, include: * The Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC) determined to what degree the abrasive lunar regolith sticks to, or is repelled by, a range of materials, ''e.g.'', solar cells, optical systems, coatings, and sensors; the diverse components are derived from the MISSE-FF facility currently on the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

(ISS). * The Next Generation Lunar Retroreflectors (NGLR) will serve as a target for lasers on Earth to precisely measure the distance between

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

and the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

. The retroreflector that flew on this mission will also provide data that could be used to understand various aspects of the lunar interior and address fundamental physics questions. * The Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI), which captured images of the interaction of

Earth's magnetosphere In astronomy and planetary science, a magnetosphere is a region of space surrounding an astronomical object in which charged particles are affected by that object's magnetic field. It is created by a celestial body with an active interior Dynamo ...

with the flow of

charged particle In physics, a charged particle is a particle with an electric charge. For example, some elementary particles, like the electron or quarks are charged. Some composite particles like protons are charged particles. An ion, such as a molecule or atom ...

s from the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

, called the

. * The Reconfigurable, Radiation Tolerant Computer System (RadPC) aimed to demonstrate a radiation-tolerant computing technology. Due to the Moon's lack of atmosphere and magnetic field, radiation from the Sun will be a challenge for electronics. This investigation also characterized the effects of radiation on the lunar surface. * The Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) was designed to characterize the structure and composition of the Moon's mantle by studying electric and magnetic fields. For this, it launched electrodes across about 700 square meters of terrain. * The Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER) was designed to measure heat flow from the interior of the Moon. The probe attempted to drill into the lunar regolith to investigate the Moon's thermal properties at different depths. * The Lunar PlanetVac (LPV) was designed to acquire lunar regolith from the surface and transfer it to other instruments that would analyze the material or put it in a container that another spacecraft could return to Earth. * Stereo CAmeras for Lunar Plume Surface Studies (SCALPSS 1.1) captured video and still images of the area under the lander from when the engine plume first disturbs the lunar surface through engine shutdown. Long-focal-length cameras will determine the pre-landing surface

topography Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the landforms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sci ...

Photogrammetry Photogrammetry is the science and technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment through the process of recording, measuring and interpreting photographic images and patterns of electromagnetic radiant ima ...

will be used to reconstruct the changing surface during landing. Understanding the physics of rocket exhaust on the regolith and the displacement of dust, gravel, and rocks is critical to understanding how to avoid kicking up surface materials during the terminal phase of flight/landing on the Moon and other celestial bodies. * The Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) generated a non-uniform electric field using varying high voltage on multiple electrodes. This traveling field, in turn, carries away the particles and has potential applications in thermal radiators, spacesuit fabrics, visors, camera lenses, solar panels, and many other technologies. * The Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), which successfully received

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide geol ...

and

Galileo Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei ( , , ) or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a poly ...

signals at lunar distances (in cis-lunar space and on the surface), thus proving the viability of the concept for lunar navigation.

References

External links

* {{Solar System probes 2025 in Florida 2025 in spaceflight 2025 on the Moon Exploration of the Moon Firefly Aerospace Kennedy Space Center Landers (spacecraft) Missions to the Moon Private space missions Soft landings on the Moon

Mission

Hardware

Payloads

See also

References

External links