Blue Ghost lunar lander �backed by Ukrainian tech guru �becomes first private spacecraft to successfully land on moon
A lunar lander launched by a private company made a soft landing on the moon Sunday �nbsp;the first such landing of its kind and major milestone for privatized space missions.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander successfully performed a smooth, upright landing, making the Texas-based company the first private contractor to put a spacecraft on the moon without crashing or falling over.
“Firefly successfully touched down on the moon in an upright, stable condition, becoming the first commercial company to complete a fully successful moon landing,” hailed Brigette Oakes, Firefly’s vice president of engineering.
Firefly Aerospace, which was founded in 2017 and formerly co-owned by Ukrainian investor Maxym Polyakov with facilities in Dnipro, is the third program to bear fruit from NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
The program is aimed to encourage the private sector to launch payloads to the moon before the agency’s planned Artemis mission to the lunar surface later this decade.
The Blue Ghost mission was part of a $145 million NASA contract.
Unlike the billions that were previously spent by the US to reach the moon in 1969, Firefly CEO Jason Kim touted his company’s ability to replicate the same success for a fraction of the cost, noting that all the private companies with NASA contracts are building from each other’s success.
“Every time we go up, we’re learning from each other,�Kim said.
The commercially-built 6-foot-6 tall lander carried 10 experiments for NASA, as well as a vacuum to suck up moon dirt for analysis and a drill to measure temperatures as deep as 10 feet below the surface.
The Blue Ghost lander is also equipped to tackle the abrasive lunar dust on the surface, which had been a scourge to the Apollo moonwalkers who got the substance caked all over their spacesuits and equipment.
Blue Ghost has about two weeks during the lunar daytime to conduct its missions, with the lander expected to shut down a few hours after the sun sets on the moon.
Along with the current Blue Ghost mission, Firefly holds a $130 million NASA contract for another lunar landing next year, along with an orbital mission.
Firefly also secured a separate $179 million contract to pay for a third Blue Ghost lander, rover and another orbiter.
Two other companies�landers are hot on Blue Ghost’s heels, with the Houston-based Intuitive Machines�rover due to land on Thursday.
The tall and skinny 15-foot lander is aiming for the bottom of the moon, just 100 miles from the south pole, and hopes to avoid the tumble of its predecessor last year.
Intuitive Machines was the first company to put the US back on the moon for the first time since NASA astronauts closed out the Apollo program in 1972.
A third lander from the Japanese company ispace is still three months from landing, which would be its second attempt at the lofty goal after its first lander crashed in 2023.
NASA wants to keep up the pace of at least two private lunar landers a year, said the space agency’s top science officer Nicky Fox.
With Post wires
