Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 successfully landed on the Moon near Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium as part of NASA’s CLPS initiative and the Artemis campaign.
The lander, carrying 10 NASA science and technology instruments, will operate for approximately 14 Earth days, testing and demonstrating lunar subsurface drilling, regolith sample collection, and lunar dust mitigation methods, among other experiments.
The mission, which launched from Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 15, included significant achievements such as record-breaking signal tracking from GNSS and radiation tolerant computing.
Firefly’s successful Moon landing is a milestone in commercial lunar exploration, paving the way for future missions to the Moon and Mars. Existing CLPS contracts, valued at $2.6 billion through 2028, will involve 11 lunar deliveries by five vendors, sending over 50 instruments to various lunar locations.