US firm Firefly scores moon landing on its very first attempt
WASHINGTON—Firefly Aerospace succeeded in its first attempt to land on the moon with its uncrewed Blue Ghost spacecraft on Sunday, kicking off a two-week research mission as a handful of private firms compete to reach the front lines of a global moon race.
The size of a compact car, the four-legged Blue Ghost carried 10 scientific payloads as it touched down at around 3:35am ET near an ancient volcanic vent on Mare Crisium, a large basin in the northeast corner of the moon’s Earth-facing side.
Suspense and silence fell over a mission control room full of company staff inside Firefly’s Austin, Texas, headquarters as Blue Ghost descended toward the moon’s surface at a gentle two miles per hour.
Will Coogan, Firefly’s Blue Ghost Chief Engineer, confirmed on a mission control live feed the spacecraft had entered lunar gravity.
“We’re on the moon,” Coogan declared moments later, prompting cheers in mission control.
‘Fully successful’
Firefly becomes the second private firm to score a moon landing, though it declared itself the first company to make a “fully successful” soft landing. Houston-based Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander made a lopsided touchdown last year, landing mostly intact but dooming many of its onboard instruments.
Five nations have made successful soft landings in the past—the then-Soviet Union, the US, China, India and, last year, Japan.
The US and China are both rushing to put their astronauts on the moon later this decade, each courting allies and giving their private sectors a key role in spacecraft development.
Blue Ghost flew on a winding path over three times around Earth, totaling roughly 2.8 million miles, to get to the moon some 383,000 kilometers from Earth, reaching the surface a month and a half after launching atop a SpaceX rocket from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
