The Moon’s getting to be a popular place. Firefly’s Blue Ghost touched down on March 2nd in Mare Crisium. It’s the first privately built lander to land safely and begin its mission. The little spacecraft set down safely in an upright, stable position and sent back an “I’m here” signal right away.

The Firefly Blue Ghost lunar lander set down on 2nd March 2025. The landing site (arrow) is about 4000 meters from the center of Mons Latreille, a large volcanic cone. NAC M1495577008LR [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Firefly is one component of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services and Artemis programs and it carried 10 science and technology instruments. They’ll study the surface for about 14 days before its mission ends. “The science and technology we send to the Moon now helps prepare the way for future NASA exploration and long-term human presence to inspire the world for generations to come,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We’re sending these payloads by working with American companies – which supports a growing lunar economy.”

Blue Ghost’s Payloads and Mission

The full name of the mission is Ghost Riders in the Sky, and left for the Moon on January 15, 2025. Its instrument manifest includes subsurface thermal exploration unit, a lunar PlanetVac to do sample collecting, a surface reflector for distance measurements, a regolith measurement unit, radiation detector, dust shield, imager, a sounder, a receiver, and a stereo camera. The data these instruments send back will be useful to future subsurface drilling operations, demonstrate global navigation satellite system abilities, give insight into radiation tolerant computing, and lunar dust mitigation methods. These data will also provide insights into how space weather and other cosmic forces impact Earth. To keep itself powered, Blue Ghost has two solar panels that provide up to 400 watts of power for nearly 1500 hours of instrument operation.

Why send so many instruments? According to Heiker Rauer, director of German’s DLR Institute of Planetary Research, there’s still a lot to learn about this place.”As Earth’s closest companion, the Moon is only about 400,000 kilometers away and an accessible target for spaceflight,” said Rauer. “At the same time, from a planetary research perspective, among the five rocky bodies in the Solar System the Moon is the complete opposite of our Earth, which is still-dynamically active after four and a half billion years. In geological terms, the ‘small’ Moon is as good as entirely inactive. However, it still holds many clues about the early evolution of the Solar System.”

Learning the Moon

You might think that scientists learned all they needed from the Apollo missions. Astronauts on those trips brought back collections of rock and dust, which gave planetary scientists a priceless look at the Moon’s volcanic and cratering history. They also provide a great deal of information about the conditions that existed when the Moon formed from a gigantic collision with the infant Earth some 4.5 billion years ago.

Those missions provided a great “surface view”. However, there are still a great many questions about the Moon, its surface, and its interior structure. That’s why space agencies (and now private companies) have been sending missions to the Moon since the early 1960s. The most recent probes have revealed much about the structure of the Moon, conditions at its poles, its gravity gradients, and other important information.

First image from the Blue Ghost landing site. It transmitted a view of itself and the lunar surface. Courtesy Firefly Aerospace.

Blue Ghost landed not far from a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium. That location is a rich source of geophysical information about the Moon, and it should be a very busy time for the onboard instrument payload. For example, the spacecraft’s LISTER experiment (developed by Texas Tech University in collaboration with Honeybee Robotics and DLR) measures heat flow from the lunar core to the surface. It’s using a probe to penetrate up to three meters through the lunar surface in Mare Crisium to get temperature measurements and characterize the thermal conductivity (flow of heat) through the regolith.

Witness to an Eclipse

Blue Ghost is set to capture a prime view of an eclipse on March 14th. For us on Earth, it will be a lunar eclipse, while Blue Ghost will send back images of a total solar eclipse as seen from the Moon. Two days later, on 16 March 2025, Blue Ghost will then capture the lunar sunset. Data from that event will demostrate how lunar dust levitates in the backlight of the setting Sun. If successful, it will show the same lunar horizon glow effect that astronaut Eugene Cernan first saw during the Apollo 17 mission. After that, the mission will spend its last “live” hours measuring the effect of lunar night.

For More Information

Blue Ghost Mission

Touchdown! Carrying NASA Science, Firefly’s Blue Ghost Lands on Moon

Perfect Moon landing in Mare Crisium