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Firefly Aerospace, the Texas-based company that conducted a pristine moon landing with its Blue Ghost spacecraft earlier this month, is declaring the historic mission over after achieving “100 percent” of its objectives. The feat marks the first “fully successful” commercial operation on the moon, the company said Monday.
Blue Ghost, a four-legged robotic lander roughly the size of a small car, spent two weeks operating on the moon’s near-side. The landing site was close to an ancient volcanic feature called Mons Latreille, which lies just north of the equator.
Blue Ghost basked in sunlight for the vast majority of the mission until lunar nightfall brought darkness to the landing site on Sunday. But the vehicle was able fulfill a key goal of the mission and continue operating for about five hours after sundown as batteries provided power.
During operations, the lander beamed a total of about 120 gigabytes of data — equivalent to more than 24,000 songs — back to Earth. Blue Ghost’s endeavors included acquiring the farthest-ever received GPS signal, using a special vacuum to collect and sort lunar dust, and deploying a drill to measure soil temperatures.
Firefly mission control received the final signal from Blue Ghost around 7:15 p.m. ET (6:15 p.m. CT) on Sunday, according to the company.
“This achievement marks the longest commercial operations on the Moon to date,” Firefly said in a statement.
The Blue Ghost lander also delivered a farewell dispatch before switching into “monument mode,” a reference to the fact that the lander is expected to lie dormant on the moon’s surface for the foreseeable future.
“Mission mode change detected, now in Monument Mode; Goodnight friends,” the message from the spacecraft read, according to a post shared by Firefly on the social media platform X.
“I will hold vigil on this spot in Mare Crisium to watch humanity’s continued journey to the stars. Here, I will outlast your mightiest rivers, your tallest mountains, and perhaps even your species as we know it,” the note continued. “But it is remarkable that a species might be outlasted by its own ingenuity. Here lies Blue Ghost, a testament to the team who, with the loving support of their families and friends, built and operated this machine and its payloads.”
Blue Ghost’s historic moon-landing mission
Operating during lunar night is a trying task, as lunar surface temperatures can swing wildly from positive 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121 degrees Celsius) to as cold as minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 173 degrees Celsius).
As lunar nightfall descended, Blue Ghost was expected to capture 4K video of the lunar horizon glow. During the phenomenon, which previously had been witnessed by Apollo astronauts, moon dust particles appear to levitate around lunar sunset.
NASA and Firefly plan to share those observations during a news conference slated for Tuesday at 2 p.m. ET (1 p.m. CT).
Separately, Blue Ghost witnessed an eclipse from the lunar surface last week. The event cast Earth’s shadow across the moon, briefly plunging the lander into darkness. However, the robotic explorer then observed the stunning “diamond ring effect” as the sun peeked out from beyond our planet.
From Earth, that eclipse was visible as a “blood moon” that appeared to turn our closest celestial neighbor a reddish-orange tint.
Other private sector moon landers failed
Firefly has dubbed its mission “the first fully successful commercial Moon landing” in history. The title references Intuitive Machines, another Texas-based company, whose Odysseus lander last year became the first commercial spacecraft to soft-land on the moon. That vehicle, however, landed in a sideways orientation that presented significant communications challenges and led to an early conclusion of the mission.
Intuitive Machines’ second lander, Athena, touched down on the moon just days after Blue Ghost but met a similar fate, lying on its side near the moon’s south pole. Both of Intuitive Machines’ landing sites were in the challenging southernmost region of the moon, which is riddled with impact craters and other hazards.
Several commercial companies — including US-based Astrobotic Technology, Japan-based Ispace and Israeli company SpaceIL — previously tried and failed to soft-land vehicles on the moon.
For decades, such missions were considered too technologically rigorous and expensive for the private sector.
Both Intuitive Machines and Firefly flew their lunar landers under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, program, which aims to spur the business sector to pursue lunar exploration.
Firefly was awarded a $101.5 million fixed-price contract for this mission.
Under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, NASA hopes to establish a fleet of spacecraft developed by the private sector that can robotically explore the lunar surface — relatively quickly and cheaply — before the agency returns astronauts to the moon later this decade.
“Our team may look younger and less experienced than those of many nations and companies that attempted Moon landings before us, but the support we have for one another is what fuels the hard work and dedication to finding every solution that made this mission a success,” said Will Coogan, Blue Ghost’s chief engineer, in a statement.