The moon has a brand new visitor, as Firefly Aerospace has made history by becoming the first private company to ever make a fully successful landing on the moon. The Blue Ghost lander touched down on the moon’s surface at 3:34 a.m. ET on Sunday, March 2, coming in for a soft landing and touching down safely and upright with its payload of science experiments and technology tests on board.
With the crater-pocked surface of the moon providing a challenge for landing, the “frankly terrifying” landing process was performed autonomously, with the lander adjusting its trajectory and selecting a safe landing site using a downward-facing camera and software called terrain relative navigation. This allows the lander’s onboard computer to accurately gauge its location and speed, and to identify potential hazards to landing such as boulders and craters.
Right up until the last moment the Firefly team were still worrying over the landing, a team member told Digital Trends, and even with the landing complete they will still be focused on the next challenge:
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“The fretting never goes away,” said Kevin Scholtes, Firefly’s Future Systems Architect. “If anything we’re always just planning for the next big adventure. The name of the game here is that we want to leave the future brighter than we found it. So part of that means perpetually fretting over the details.”
There were cheers and jubilation in the Firefly control room in Austin, Texas and the lander made its safe descend. “We’re on the moon!” NASA’s Nicky Fox, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, announced at a landing event to the delight of the audience.
The lander touched down in a region called Mare Crisium, where it will stay and collect data for the next two weeks. The payloads on board include experiments from NASA, which supported the landing as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program to use private companies to carry essential supplies to the moon.
The experiments on board include a drill and sample collection system, a test of dust-repelling technology which is important to deal with the glass-sharp dust that covers the moon’s surface, and instruments for studying how winds from the sun interact with Earth’s magnetic field.
Firefly also released a first image of the moon’s surface captured by the lander:
This image is just a low quality image showing part of the lander and the moon’s surface, but high quality images with better views should be available today as Firefly tests out the instruments on board Blue Ghost and begins its operations — so stay tuned for those.
“Firefly is literally and figuratively over the Moon,” said Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly Aerospace, in a statement. “Our Blue Ghost lunar lander now has a permanent home on the lunar surface with 10 NASA payloads and a plaque with every Firefly employee’s name. This bold, unstoppable team has proven we’re well equipped to deliver reliable, affordable access to the Moon, and we won’t stop there. With annual lunar missions, Firefly is paving the way for a lasting lunar presence that will help unlock access to the rest of the solar system for our nation, our partners, and the world.”