WASHINGTON — Firefly Aerospace says that its Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander mission has ended as expected, completing all its objectives.
Operations of Blue Ghost 1 ended with a final transmission around 7:15 p.m. Eastern March 16, after 346 hours — nearly 14 and a half days — of operations in sunlight and an additional five hours after the sun set at its Mare Crisium landing site.
The spacecraft returned more than 119 gigabytes of data, including 51 gigabytes of science and technology data from its 10 NASA-sponsored payloads. The company said that the lander met 100% of its mission objectives.
“We’re incredibly proud of the demonstrations Blue Ghost enabled from tracking GPS signals on the moon for the first time to robotically drilling deeper into the lunar surface than ever before,” Jason Kim, chief executive of Firefly, said in a March 17 statement about the end of the mission.
Those payloads also include cameras to monitor of plume of material kicked up by the spacecraft’s engines as it landed on the moon. Other payloads examined the feasibility of an electrodynamic dust shield to remove regolith from spacecraft surfaces and a system that uses nitrogen gas to collect regolith samples.
The lander was able to observe a March 14 eclipse a bonus objective, seeing the sun eclipsed by the Earth, creating a bright ring as sunlight passed through the Earth’s atmosphere. The observations after sunset were intended to characterize the dust environment, including looking for any evidence of dust levitation.
Firefly reported no major issues with Blue Ghost since its March 2 landing. Lander operations were curtailed during the middle of the lunar day, something the company planned to compensate for the heat during that time.
Firefly had a $101.5 million task order from NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program to fly the payloads on Blue Ghost 1. Agency officials had already praised the success of the mission as proof CLPS is working as intended after three other landers either failed to make it to the moon or suffered hard landings that limited their activity.
“So overall, it’s been a fabulous, wonderful proof positive that the CLPS model does work,” Brad Bailey, assistant deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said during a NASA town hall meeting at the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference March 10.
The success of Blue Ghost 1 stands out since it was the company’s first attempt to land on the moon. “This team continues to make near-impossible achievements look easy, but there is no such thing as an easy moon landing, especially on your first attempt,” Will Coogan, Blue Ghost chief engineer at Firefly, said in the company statement. “We battle tested every system on the lander and simulated every mission scenario we could think of to get to this point.”
He also praised the team who worked on the mission. “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.”
Firefly has two more lunar lander missions under contract through NASA’s CLPS program. Blue Ghost 2, scheduled for launch next year, will attempt a landing on the lunar farside, delivering payloads for lunar seismology and for cosmology. It will also deploy ESA’s Lunar Pathfinder communications satellite in orbit, while the company’s own Elytra Dark spacecraft serves as a communications relay in orbit.
Blue Ghost 3, scheduled for launch in 2028, will return to the near side of the moon, carrying astrophysical and lunar science payloads that include a small rover.
