The First Private Lunar Landing
Firefly Aerospace, an 8-year old Texas-based enterprise, is the first commercial company to successfully land on the Moon.
Late Sunday, Firefly live-streamed its Blue Ghost lander touching down on the lunar surface. The vessel shared its success as it sees its shadow…
Landing on the moon was a great feat for Firefly… but Blue Ghost’s mission has just begun.
The lander will operate payloads as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative for a complete lunar day (~14 Earth days.)
On March 14th, Blue Ghost plans to shoot HD imagery of a total eclipse.
And March 16th, the lander will capture the lunar sunset, providing data on how lunar dust levitates due to solar influences – an observation first documented by Eugene Cernan on Apollo 17.
With the hardest part behind us, Firefly looks forward to completing more than 14 days of surface operations, again raising the bar for commercial cislunar capabilities. Just through transit to the Moon, Firefly’s mission has already delivered the most science data to date for the NASA CLPS initiative. CLPS has played a key role in Firefly’s evolution from a rocket company to a provider of launch, lunar, and on-orbit services from LEO to cislunar and beyond.
Shea Ferring, Chief Technology Officer at Firefly Aerospace
The private space race is afoot – we are here for it.
Here’s Firefly mission control for more.
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Godspeed – Rosebee
