American company Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander successfully landed on the lunar surface on Sunday. This is the second private commercial vehicle to reach the moon.
The landing took place in the Mayr Crisium region of the moon. Blue Ghost was sent into space on January 15, 2025, by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
Firefly Aerospace has created history by landing on. What giants like Elon Musk and Jose Bezos could not do, this startup, founded about 10 years ago, has done. Firefly’s chief engineer Will Coogan said, ‘The landing was successful. We are on . Before this, only five countries – Russia, America, China, India and Japan – had succeeded in doing this.
The aim of this mission is to investigate the ‘Sea of Crisis’, a huge crater visible on from Earth.
This lander will analyze the lunar soil. It also has a drill installed in it, which will go 3 meters below the lunar surface and record the temperature there.
Blue Ghost started sending pictures immediately after landing on the moon. The Firefly company has shared these pictures on its social media handle.
The Blue Ghost is named after a species of firefly.
The Blue Ghost is named after a rare species of firefly found in the United States. According to the company, the small four-legged lander is 6 feet 6 inches (2 meters) long and 11 feet (3.5 meters) wide.
The American space agency NASA is also a partner in the mission. Another company, Intuitive Machines, also hopes to land its Athena spacecraft on the south pole in the next few days.
The Blue Ghost mission is 14 days long.
Previously, Intuitive Machines was the first private company to land on the moon. Its spacecraft Odysseus reached on February 22 last year. However, the spacecraft landed on the slope of a crater, causing its landing gear to break and it toppled over.
The Blue Ghost orbited the moon for two weeks before landing and then landed smoothly.
The Blue Ghost mission lasts about 14 days, which is equivalent to a day on. If the mission is completely successful, it will help increase human access to the Moon.
Man last set foot on the moon in 1972.
Dr Simon Barber, a planetary science researcher at the Open University, told the BBC that this is the first private mission to successfully land on. By going to, we can learn how to operate robotic instruments in space.
The moon’s atmosphere is very harsh. Sometimes it’s very hot and sometimes it’s very cold. There’s a lot of dust and radiation.
Man last set foot on in 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission. Dr. Barber said that the Apollo missions were extremely successful. But they were ‘touch and go’ missions.
At that time, astronauts would stay there for three days and then they had to return, because it cost billions of dollars. It wasn’t sustainable.