Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander has ceased operations 16 March, when the sun set over his landing place. This marked the end of a successful two-week mission, which set a new standard for commercial lunar exploration.
100% successful mission:
- Blue Ghost landed on the Sea of Crisis (Great Crisis) 2 March, having delivered 10 scientific instruments of NASA.
- It was the second successful landing of a private vehicle on the moon in history, following Intuitive Machines' Odysseus module in February 2024 year.
- The device transmitted 119 gigabytes of data, of which 51 GB — scientific information.
- Blue Ghost worked 5 hours after sunset, watching, how the behavior of lunar dust changes in the dark.
Key achievements of the mission:
- For the first time, GPS signals were recorded on the Moon.
- A robotic system drilled the deepest hole in the lunar soil.
- The device observed the eclipse “Blood worm” 13-14 March, taking a unique photo “diamond ring”.
- Blue Ghost cameras captured the sunset on the moon, which will allow NASA to investigate the phenomenon of levitation of lunar dust.
A new phase of commercial lunar missions:
- Blue Ghost became part of a wave of private missions to the moon, along with:
Japanese landing module Resilience from ispace (boarding is expected 5 June).
The second Athena module from Intuitive Machines, who made the landing 6 March, but tipped over and failed.
- Firefly is already preparing the next mission on 2026 year, which will send Blue Ghost to the far side of the Moon and launch the Elytra Dark satellite into its orbit.
The Blue Ghost mission demonstrated the effectiveness of commercial lunar missions, By confirming, that private companies can carry out complex scientific research in deep space. The data obtained will help NASA prepare for the landing of astronauts within the Artemis program and future missions to Mars.