In first, non-public U.S. spaceship lands upright on Moon

Nicknamed ‘Ghost Riders within the Sky,’ the mission comes simply over a 12 months after the first-ever business lunar touchdown and is a part of a NASA partnership with trade to chop prices and assist Artemis, this system aiming to return astronauts to the Moon.
| Photograph Credit score: AFP

A U.S. firm efficiently landed its spacecraft on the Moon on Sunday (March 2, 2025), marking solely the second non-public mission to attain the milestone – and the primary to take action upright.

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 touched down shortly after 3.34 a.m. US Jap Time (0834 GMT) close to Mons Latreille, a volcanic formation in Mare Crisium on the Moon’s northeastern close to aspect.

“Y’all caught the touchdown, we’re on the Moon,” an engineer at mission management in Austin, Texas, referred to as out because the workforce erupted in cheers.

CEO Jason Kim confirmed that the spacecraft was “steady and upright” – in distinction to the primary non-public touchdown final February, which got here down sideways.

“We’re on the Moon!” Nicky Fox, affiliate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, rejoiced.

The primary picture from the lander revealed the rocky, pockmarked terrain it needed to autonomously navigate with a purpose to choose its landing spot, having slowed down from hundreds of miles per hour to simply two mph.

Additionally learn | Non-public US, Japanese lunar landers launch on single rocket

Nicknamed “Ghost Riders within the Sky,” the mission comes simply over a 12 months after the first-ever business lunar touchdown and is a part of a NASA partnership with trade to chop prices and assist Artemis, this system aiming to return astronauts to the Moon.

The golden lander, in regards to the measurement of a hippopotamus, launched on January 15 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, capturing beautiful footage of Earth and the Moon alongside the way in which. It shared a journey with a Japanese firm’s lander set to aim a touchdown in Could.

Blue Ghost carries ten devices, together with a lunar soil analyzer, a radiation-tolerant laptop and an experiment testing the feasibility of utilizing the present world satellite tv for pc navigation system to navigate the Moon.

Designed to function for a full lunar day (14 Earth days), Blue Ghost is predicted to seize high-definition imagery of a complete eclipse on March 14, when Earth blocks the Solar from the Moon’s horizon.

On March 16, it’ll report a lunar sundown, providing insights into how mud levitates above the floor underneath photo voltaic affect – creating the mysterious lunar horizon glow first documented by Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan.

Hopping drone

Blue Ghost’s arrival will probably be adopted on March 6 by Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission, that includes its lander Athena.

In February 2024, Intuitive Machines grew to become the primary non-public firm to attain a comfortable lunar touchdown – additionally the primary U.S. touchdown because the crewed Apollo 17 mission of 1972.

Nevertheless, the success was tempered by a mishap: the lander got here down too quick, tipped over on impression, leaving it unable to generate sufficient solar energy and chopping the mission quick.

This time, the corporate says it has made key enhancements to the hexagonal-shaped lander, which has a taller, slimmer profile than Blue Ghost, and is across the top of an grownup giraffe.

Athena launched on Wednesday aboard a SpaceX rocket, taking a extra direct route towards Mons Mouton – the southernmost lunar touchdown website ever tried.

Its payloads embody three rovers, a drill to seek for ice and the star of the present: a first-of-its-kind hopping drone designed to discover the Moon’s rugged terrain.

NASA’s non-public Moon fleet

Touchdown on the Moon presents distinctive challenges as a result of absence of an environment, making parachutes ineffective.

As an alternative, spacecraft should depend on exactly managed thruster burns to gradual their descent.

Till Intuitive Machines’ first profitable mission, solely 5 nationwide area businesses had completed this feat: the Soviet Union, america, China, India and Japan, in that order.

Now, america is working to make non-public lunar missions routine by way of NASA’s $2.6 billion Business Lunar Payload Providers (CLPS) program.

The missions come at a fragile second for NASA, amid hypothesis that it might reduce and even cancel its Artemis lunar program in favor of prioritizing Mars exploration – a key objective of each President Donald Trump and his shut advisor, SpaceX founder Elon Musk.