Firefly's moon lander ends successful mission

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Mar 17, 2025

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Firefly Aerospace managed to stay upright when it landed on the moon two weeks ago and announced Monday it had completed its mission.

The Blue Ghost lander that launched from Kennedy Space Center in January touched down on the moon on March 2 becoming the first commercial company to achieve the feat without crashing or tipping over.

On board, the lander carried 10 NASA science and technology experiments as part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

The Cedar Park, Texas-based company said it met 100% of the mission objectives with 14 days of surface operations during the lunar day. The lander was only designed to survive about 5 hours of the harsh temperatures once it passed into the darkness of lunar night.

The last data received by the lander came at 7:15 p.m. Sunday. Coupled with 346 hours of daylight operations, it marks the longest commercial lunar operation to date, the company stated.

“After a flawless moon landing, the Firefly team immediately moved into surface operations to ensure all 10 NASA payloads could capture as much science as possible during the lunar day,” said Firefly CEO Jason Kim in a press release.

Only two other commercial landers, both from Houston-based Intuitive Machines, and both flying NASA payloads, survived their attempts at a soft landing. Both of that companies’ landers, though, tipped over limiting their ability to generate energy from blocked solar panels. The most recent was a lander named Athena that attempted to land just days after Firefly’s successful touchdown.

One big difference, though, was Firefly’s landing spot was in the relatively clear terrain in the moon’s northeast quadrant whereas both Intuitive Machines landings were near the moon’s south pole.

Commercial landers from Japan and Israel crashed during their attempts while another commercial company flying for NASA, Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology, had propellant issues during its attempted lunar mission in 2024 and never made it to the moon.

Firefly’s success has meant the first real win for NASA’s CLPS program as the payloads on the Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic missions had very limited use.

“We’re incredibly proud of the demonstrations Blue Ghost enabled from tracking GPS signals on the moon for the first time to robotically drilling deeper into the lunar surface than ever before,” Kim said.

Firefly said it had transmitted 119 GB of data back to Earth during the mission.

One of its payloads tracked global navigation satellite system data, which includes signals from U.S.-based GPS and European Galileo networks, proving something similar could be enabled on the moon in the future.

Other NASA payloads included an X-ray imager that looked at how the solar wind interacted with Earth’s magnetic field; electrodes to measure electric and magnetic fields that were deployed out to 60 feet from the lander; a computer designed to withstand radiation; a 3-foot-deep drill to look at lunar temperature underground; and a regolith collector named PlanetVac.

Several more focused on lunar dust including an instrument that looked at its stickiness; another that looked at the dust plume created when the lander touched down; and the Kennedy Space Center-designed Electrodynamic Dust Shield, that was able to use electrodynamic forces to remove lunar dust.

The mission also came during a total solar eclipse, from the moon’s perspective — the same as the total lunar eclipse dubbed the blood moon eclipse as seen from Earth.

The lander’s operation that continued five hours after lunar sunset was designed to help NASA determine if lunar dust levitates because of solar influences, something observed by astronaut Eugene Cernan on the Apollo 17 mission back in 1972.

“This team continues to make near-impossible achievements look easy, but there is no such thing as an easy moon landing, especially on your first attempt,” said Firefly’s Will Coogan, Blue Ghost chief engineer. “We battle tested every system on the lander and simulated every mission scenario we could think of to get to this point.”

Firefly has several more missions under NASA’s program in the coming years. Blue Ghost Mission 2 will feature both the lander and an orbiting vehicle called Elytra Dark that are headed for the far side of the moon targeting next year.

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