The second-ever commercial landing on the moon comes amid a flurry of lunar exploration activity that will see around a dozen missions this year alone
By Matthew Sparkes
3 March 2025
Blue Ghost took a photo of its shadow on the lunar surface, with Earth in the sky above
Firefly Aerospace
A Texan company has achieved the second commercial landing on the moon – and the first that didn’t topple over on touchdown. The success comes amid a flurry of private and state lunar exploration.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander launched on 15 January atop a SpaceX rocket and spent 45 days travelling to the moon. It landed on 2 March at 8.34am GMT, settling in a spot at Mare Crisium, a smooth basin formed by volcanic eruptions three billion years ago.
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Blue Ghost used thrusters to slow from an orbital velocity of 1.7 kilometres per second to just 1 metre per second, then landed on shock-absorbing legs within 100 metres of its target. Jason Kim, Firefly’s CEO, told CNN that the craft’s short stature was key to a safe landing: “It’s a successful design, and you look at past designs and past designs that were successful, [they] look very similar — short and squatty.”
Blue Ghost is around 2 metres tall, 3.5 metres wide and carries 10 scientific instruments as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme that uses the private sector to carry out a range of experiments ahead of planned crewed missions.