Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1 landed successfully on the Moon on March 2, 2025, delivering 10 NASA science and technology instruments under the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The landing marked Firefly's first trip to the lunar surface and NASA's first CLPS delivery with the company.
Blue Ghost touched down at 3:34 a.m. Eastern time near Mons Latreille, a volcanic feature inside Mare Crisium on the Moon's near side. NASA reported that the spacecraft was upright and stable after landing. The solar-powered lander was designed to operate for about one lunar day, equal to roughly 14 Earth days.
The spacecraft launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on January 15 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. During its route to the Moon, it traveled more than 2.8 million miles and returned more than 27 gigabytes of data. It entered lunar orbit on February 13 and later lowered that orbit before beginning its final descent.
The lander's payloads cover several areas needed for future lunar exploration. NASA said the instruments would demonstrate subsurface drilling, collection of lunar soil, use of navigation-satellite signals, radiation-tolerant computing and methods for reducing the effects of lunar dust. Other measurements are intended to improve understanding of radiation, magnetic fields and the space environment.
One experiment detected Global Navigation Satellite System signals at a distance of 246,000 miles, demonstrating that positioning systems built for Earth may also support operations near the Moon. Firefly also planned to photograph a total eclipse and the lunar sunset, when scientists hoped to observe how dust behaves as sunlight disappears. Operations were expected to continue for several hours into the lunar night.
Blue Ghost descended autonomously toward a relatively flat area free of large boulders. Its main engine reduced the vehicle's orbital velocity before smaller thrusters guided the final approach. The successful touchdown followed the first private lunar landing, achieved by Intuitive Machines' Odysseus in February 2024.
NASA uses CLPS contracts to purchase delivery services from private companies, allowing instruments to fly to multiple lunar locations in support of scientific work and the Artemis campaign. The agency has awarded 11 deliveries to five vendors, covering more than 50 instruments, under contracts with a combined maximum value of $2.6 billion through 2028.
For Firefly, the landing established a working lunar-delivery capability. The surface mission's data will now determine how well the instruments and lander perform through daylight, sunset and the start of the extreme lunar night.
