Perhaps the most difficult, nail-biting stretch of Blue Ghost’s mission is over with. The vehicle is sitting on the moon’s near side, within an ancient crater filled with volcanic material.
Here’s what still lies ahead:
- Blue Ghost will unfurl its X-band antenna, which can beam troves of data and video down from the moon. That should be happening right now.
- NASA and Firefly will verify all 10 science and tech demonstrations are in working order. Over the next two weeks, mission teams will collect information on everything from how the lunar soil behaved during descent to studying the heat flow from the moon’s interior.
- Blue Ghost will experience an eclipse on March 14 as Earth casts a shadow on the landing site.
- Just before lunar nightfall, Blue Ghost will aim to capture photos of a “lunar horizon glow,” a phenomenon during which moon dust will briefly levitate.
- About 14 days into the mission, Blue Ghost’s landing site will be plunged into lunar night. The lander will then need to rely on battery power as the company aims to keep it functioning in temperatures as cold as minus 250°F (minus 130°C).
- At the end of its operations, Blue Ghost will stay put, destined to remain on the moon’s surface indefinitely.
Jason Kim, Firefly’s CEO, said Firefly looked to prior lunar landing missions for guidance.
Houston-based Intuitive Machines, for example, became the first private-sector company ever to soft-land a vehicle on the moon with its IM-1 mission last year. But the vehicle did land tipped over on its side.
“Our team, of course, did the logical thing and looked at all the missions before us, but our design was unique to Firefly,” Kim said. “It’s a successful design, and you look at past designs and past designs that were successful, (they) look very similar — short and squatty.”
In recent years, there’s been a lot of focus on venturing to the south pole of the moon, where ice may be trapped in permanently shadowed lunar craters. The lunar south pole is a destination for future crewed Artemis missions, as well as robotic explorers.
But Blue Ghost and its suite of scientific instruments were intended to land elsewhere, said Dr. Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
“The moon is an incredible place for science,” Fox said. “We don’t want to go to the same place every single time because we want to learn more and more about the moon. It’s like going on vacation. You don’t want to go to the same place all the time. As we are preparing to send astronauts back, we want to make sure we understand all the areas, and we’ll still be characterizing it for astronaut safety, but we’re also looking at where the most interesting regions are.”
Fox also noted that the 10 instruments aboard Blue Ghost are “like a holisitic suite, perfectly chosen for the region we’re going to.”
The mission landed near an ancient volcanic feature called Mons Latreille, which lies on the far eastern edge of the moon’s visible face just north of the equator.
“You know your delivery service, you pick the place you want your package to go, and that’s just what we did Firefly,” Fox said.
Before concluding the news conference, Firefly Aerospace shared “one more incredible, breathtaking image” that Blue Ghost captured after landing on the lunar surface.
The lander’s shadow can be seen on the surface of the moon, with Earth visible above it.
Joel Kearns, the deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said that the dozen or so providers with the space agency’s CLPS program — under which Blue Ghost is operating — are all unique.
“We see very different technical approaches of the different companies that are doing this for the United States,” Kearns said. “One thing that distinguishes Firefly is that it was clear that they were extremely technical…very rigorous, technically from the get go.”
Firefly’s Blue Ghost program head Ray Allensworth added that the company ran through dozens of simulations.
“You do nominal scenarios. You do off-nominal scenarios,” Allensworth said, using the aerospace term for normal or on-target.
For example, Allensworth said, her team ran through how they would respond if a meteor hit one of Blue Ghost’s solar panels.
“You kind of make up all these scenarios, and you run through them, and it’s really to make sure that all the teams are actually operating like they did tonight,” she said.
Firefly’s Ray Allensworth said that — based on currently available data — Blue Ghost hit its mark on the lunar surface.
The vehicle needed to touch down within a 100-meter (330-foot) target touchdown site.
Allensworth also revealed that Blue Ghost conducted two “hazard avoidance” maneuvers during its final descent.
Those hazards included boulders and rocks, Allensworth said.
Blue Ghost is equipped with high-def cameras — so why didn’t the vehicle send a live broadcast of its harrowing descent?
Ray Allensworth, head of Firefly’s Blue Ghost program, just revealed the answer.
Mission control wanted to focus the vehicle’s communications bandwidth on delivering accurate real-time data, getting information about the spacecraft’s altitude and speed.
“Even though you might have the camera capability to do live streaming, it’s not always the most practical thing to do in the moment,” Allensworth said.
Ray Allensworth, @Firefly_Space Spacecraft Program Director, explains why it would not have been a practical use of resources to stream live from the spacecraft during Blue Ghost’s Moon landing. pic.twitter.com/bUhXDejbUI
— NASA (@NASA) March 2, 2025
Storied NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who is 95, tuned into Sunday’s lunar touchdown.
Aldrin, who walked on the moon with Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, offered his congratulations.
Firefly CEO Jason Kim said he saw the post. “That’s pretty amazing,” he remarked.
“Contact light, engine stop!” Congratulations FireFly Aerospace for Blue Ghost’s Mission 1 successful Moon landing today!
It also marks a new milestone in the collaborations between NASA and private Space companies, as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS)… pic.twitter.com/Y5psA3qSu9
— Dr. Buzz Aldrin (@TheRealBuzz) March 2, 2025
During a news briefing, officials debuted a second image captured by Blue Ghost from the lunar surface.
“In the background, you can see our home planet, that beautiful blue marble Earth,” said Firefly’s Trina Patterson.
Countries and companies worldwide are racing to the surface of the moon — for several critical reasons.
So far, China, India and Japan are the only nations to have soft-landed vehicles on the moon in the 21st century. But there are more than 100 lunar missions planned to take place before 2030, according to the European Space Agency.
Here’s why:
- Resources: The moon is home to things like minerals and isotopes that are hard to find on Earth. Some of these materials could be vital to nuclear fusion, a possibly game-changing clean energy source.
- Exploration: Scientists have also theorized that water in ice form could be available on the moon — something that could be turned into rocket fuel to allow for more exploration. Several countries have plans to establish permanent bases on the moon that could serve as jumping-off points for other space destinations.
- Politics: Space travel has a historic connection to the Cold War. Going to the moon shows other countries that you have technological superiority. The United States’ biggest competitor today is China, which has spent billions on space endeavors.
Each of Blue Ghost’s four feet were equipped with sensors that were designed to immediately confirm when they had touched lunar soil.
But when Blue Ghost made its touchdown, the webcast showed only three of the vehicle’s four landing legs confirmed contact.
Firefly’s Ray Allensworth, the program director for Blue Ghost, told CNN in an interview that there may be a benign explanation.
“I’m not 100% sure what happened on the fourth one,” Allensworth said.
“So there’s also a good chance that the software just ignored — threw the data out — from that sensor because maybe it tripped early. I’m not 100% sure,” she added, “we’d have to go back and look at the data.”
But it is abundantly clear that Blue Ghost is sitting upright, she noted.
Firefly CEO Jason Kim, speaking to CNN, said tonight’s success opens up a boundless wealth of opportunities for future Blue Ghost missions.
“Anything is possible,” he said. “We could take this technology and go to Mars.”
He is also looking forward to Firefly’s next lunar mission for NASA, which is already on the books and is slated to land a Blue Ghost vehicle on the far side of the moon.
So far, only China has sent a spacecraft there.
Kim said that Firefly has exciting new technology on deck for that feat.
A separate spacecraft for that mission, called Elytra, will be put in orbit around the moon to serve as a communications relay, beaming data between the spacecraft and Earth because Blue Ghost’s antennas won’t be able to point directly home.
“That orbiter is very exciting because we could put cameras on there, we could put other sensors on there, and now we can start creating a new category of mapping out the moon,” Kim said. “And so we’re really excited about doing that, because there’s a lot of government and science and commercial entities that want that data.”
During the lander’s space journey from Earth to the moon, Blue Ghost had captured the celestial bodies in various positions of their orbits — including footage of Earth eclipsing the sun, that shows the spacecraft submerged in brief darkness as our planet blocks nearly all of the sun’s light.
But the lander is just getting started — Firefly’s CEO, Jason Kim, previously told CNN that he is excited about sharing images and footage that Blue Ghost captures after landing. The lander is expected to capture a solar eclipse on March 14, where our planet will block the sun from the moon’s surface and cast Blue Ghost into Earth’s shadow for about five hours. From Earth, a lunar eclipse will be visible to those in the path of totality.
The lander is also expected to capture a phenomenon during the lunar sunset on March 16, that was first sketched by Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan.
“There’s a phenomenon called the lunar horizon glow (scattered light caused by floating electrostatic particles) that only the Apollo 15 and 17 astronauts have seen with their eyes,” Kim said. “We’re going to be able to capture that in 4K-by-4K high-definition video and share that with the rest of the world.”
NASA is looking to test out a “paradigm shift” in how soil samples are collected on the moon.
Called the Lunar PlanetVac, it is essentially a vacuum cleaner designed to function with little gravity.
The device even comes packed with its own gas, and when it turns on, a blast of pressurized gas will create “a small tornado,” according to NASA.
“If successful, material from the dust cloud it creates then will be funneled into a transfer tube via the payload’s secondary pneumatic jets and collected in a sample container,” the space agency said in a blog post.
The process will take mere seconds, and once inside the sample container, the soil will be sifted and photographed, transmitting the data back home. (The sample will not be returned to Earth, nor will the Blue Ghost lunar lander. They’re set to remain on the moon indefinitely.)
The instrument was developed by Honeybee Robotics, which is a subsidiary of Blue Origin, the space company founded by Jeff Bezos.
“There’s no digging, no mechanical arm to wear out requiring servicing or replacement – it functions like a vacuum cleaner.”
Dennis Harris, manager for the LPV payload at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
GPS service is prolific on Earth, underpinning everything from our driving directions to our dating apps.
The service is used in space, too. Weather satellites, for example, rely on the tech.
But a payload on board Blue Ghost has more than doubled the previous record for how far into space a GPS signal has been acquired.
It’s called the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) payload, which is part of a collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency. And it’s seeking to push the boundaries of GPS and the European GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System).
LuGRE will also attempt to get GPS signals from the lunar surface, something that was thought unlikely if not impossible until recently, said James Miller, deputy director with NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation Program.
“With the advancement of technology, these ultra-weak signal tracking receivers and high-gain antenna combinations actually have pushed the envelope so that we are confident,” Miller said.
Miller said GPS is not the end-all solution to navigating on the moon. But it will take years — perhaps decades — to set up extensive infrastructure, and GPS services can provide a nice stop gap.
GPS is “already broadcasting,” Miller said. “So we’re trying to be as cost-effective as we can for the US government.”
Firefly just released an official statement on its mission’s success, saying the “Blue Ghost lunar lander softly touched down on the Moon’s surface in an upright, stable configuration on the company’s first attempt.”
“As part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, named Ghost Riders in the Sky, sets the tone for the future of exploration across cislunar space as the first commercial company in history to achieve a fully successful Moon landing,” the statement reads.
NASA and Firefly personnel are expected to take questions from reporters at a news conference scheduled for 4:30 a.m. CT (5:30 a.m. ET).
Nicky Fox, head of NASA’s science mission directorate, just took the stage alongside Firefly CEO Jason Kim and several other key leaders behind this misison.
Fox commented on how Firefly employees appeared relaxed and in control throughout the landing: “There was no panic. It was amazing — just everyone was calm, everyone was disciplined. Everybody knew exactly what they were doing. No one had any doubt that we were going to land on the moon tonight.”
Blue Ghost just sent its first visual dispatch — a photo of the lunar soil beneath its feet.
“The navigation system did such a phenomenal job finding what looks like a relatively flat surface for us to land on,” Firefly’s Brigette Oaks said.
NASA was expected to pay Firefly $93 million for this mission.
But that value was ultimately bumped up to $101 million. The price increase accounted for challenges with Covid-ravaged supply chains and other small changes to the mission profile.
Another key reason: According to CEO Jason Kim, Blue Ghost required some tweaks in the hopes that the vehicle will briefly survive lunar nightfall — when temperatures can drop to -250°F (-130°C).
Blue Ghost will spend the vast majority of its mission in lunar daylight, basking in the warm glow of the sun’s rays and drawing energy into its solar panels.
But after about 14 days, night will encroach. Typically the disappearing sunlight spells the end for lunar lander missions, but Blue Ghost will aim to stay alive.
“There’s five hours at the end of the 14 days where we’ll be performing operations into the lunar night and really test the limits of the system,” Firefly CEO Jason Kim told CNN in December.
The hundreds of Firefly employees gathered at a watch party in Cedar Park, Texas gritted through the final nail-biting moments before touchdown was confirmed.
Now — they’re letting loose.
