# Blue Ghost Mission 1

Blue Ghost Mission 1, was a robotic Moon landing mission by Firefly Aerospace, launched on January 15, 2025, and successfully soft-landed on the lunar surface on March 2, 2025, at 08:34 UTC. With this achievement, Firefly Aerospace became the first commercial company to complete a fully successful soft landing on the Moon. As part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, the mission delivered ten scientific and technological experiments to advance future human exploration under the Artemis program. Not long after sunset at the end of the lunar day on March 16, 2025, the Lander's batteries were depleted, communications were lost and end of the spacecraft's mission was officially declared at 23:25 UTC.
The Blue Ghost lunar lander was launched from Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket that also carried the Hakuto-R Mission 2 lander. It delivered 10 payloads to Mare Crisium, a 500-kilometer-wide (310 mi) lunar basin. Its planned 60-day mission aims to analyze lunar regolith, study geophysical characteristics, and investigate interactions between the solar wind and Earth's magnetic field. The lander's scientific payloads include a regolith adherence characterization device, a lunar retroreflector for precision distance measurements, a radiation-tolerant computer, thermal exploration probes, and more.

## Mission

On February 4, 2021, NASA awarded Firefly a contract worth US$93.3 million to deliver a suite of ten science investigations and technology demonstrations to the Moon in 2023. The award is part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, in which NASA is securing the service of commercial partners to quickly land science and technology payloads on the lunar surface as part of the Artemis program.
On May 20, 2021, Firefly Aerospace announced its selection of SpaceX's Falcon 9 Block 5 as the launch vehicle for the inaugural Blue Ghost lunar lander mission. This decision was made due to the Falcon 9's performance and payload capacity, which Firefly's Alpha rocket could not provide. The company indicated that its future Medium Launch Vehicle would support subsequent Blue Ghost missions.
Development milestones for the Blue Ghost lander progressed steadily over the following years. On April 26, 2022, Firefly completed the Integration Readiness Review for the lander, with a tentative launch date set for 2024. In November 2023, Firefly refined the schedule, specifying a launch window between the third and fourth quarters of 2024.
By May 2024, the Nammo UK LEROS 4-ET engines for Blue Ghost were completed, and their integration into the lander was confirmed in June. Firefly announced that preparations were proceeding as planned, with the company reaffirming a Q4 2024 launch target in July. Environmental testing of the lander commenced in August at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), ensuring the spacecraft's readiness for the rigors of spaceflight.
In November 2024, Firefly Aerospace formally announced that the Blue Ghost lander was fully prepared for launch, setting a mid-January 2025 launch date. Payload encapsulation was completed on January 10, marking one of the final steps in the pre-launch sequence. On January 15, 2025, the Blue Ghost lander successfully launched from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A at 06:11:39 UTC (1:11:39 a.m.EST, local time at the launch site) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket. The mission also included Hakuto-R Mission 2 as a co-manifested payload.
On March 2, 2025, at 2:34 a.m. CST, the mission successfully landed on the lunar surface, northwest of Mons Latreille. Firefly Aerospace thus became the first commercial company to execute a "fully successful" soft-landing of a spacecraft on the Moon. The mission is intended to last up to 14 Earth days, one lunar day, until the lunar sunset brings temperatures as low as −173 °C (−280 °F). Three solar panels will power the lander's research instruments during that time.

## Hardware

Blue Ghost has four landing legs, communications, heating and solar power systems, and features multiple layers of insulation. The Blue Ghost solar panels, from subcontractor SolAero By Rocket Lab, provide a maximum of 400 watts of power. ASI by Rocket Lab provides flight, ground and GN&C software, trajectory design, orbit determination, and software testbed integration. Firefly asserts that its in-house end-to-end manufacturing and testing of the Blue Ghost structure is a differentiator among the CLPS landers.

## Payloads

The mission landed at Mare Crisium, a 500-kilometer-wide (310 mi) basin visible from Earth. The lander's scientific instruments will collect data on the properties of the Moon's regolith—its loose, fragmented rock and soil—as well as its geophysical characteristics and the interactions between the solar wind and Earth's magnetic field. These findings will contribute to the preparation and planning of future human missions to the lunar surface.
The payloads, collectively expected to total 94 kilograms (207 lb) in mass, include:
* The Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC) will determine to what degree the abrasive lunar regolith sticks to, or is repelled by, a range of materials, e.g., solar cells, optical systems, coatings, and sensors; the diverse components are derived from the MISSE-FF facility currently on the International Space Station (ISS).
* The Next Generation Lunar Retroreflectors (NGLR) will serve as a target for lasers on Earth to precisely measure the distance between Earth and the Moon. The retroreflector that will fly on this mission will also provide data that could be used to understand various aspects of the lunar interior and address fundamental physics questions.
* The Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI), which will capture images of the interaction of Earth's magnetosphere with the flow of charged particles from the Sun, called the solar wind.
* The Reconfigurable, Radiation Tolerant Computer System (RadPC) aims to demonstrate a radiation-tolerant computing technology. Due to the Moon's lack of atmosphere and magnetic field, radiation from the Sun will be a challenge for electronics. This investigation will also characterize the effects of radiation on the lunar surface.
* The Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) is designed to characterize the structure and composition of the Moon's mantle by studying electric and magnetic fields. For this, it plans to place electrodes across about 700 square meters of terrain.
* The Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER) is designed to measure heat flow from the interior of the Moon. The probe will attempt to drill 2.1 to 3.0 meters (7 to 10 ft) into the lunar regolith to investigate the Moon's thermal properties at different depths.
* The Lunar PlanetVac (LPV) is designed to acquire lunar regolith from the surface and transfer it to other instruments that would analyze the material or put it in a container that another spacecraft could return to Earth.
* Stereo CAmeras for Lunar Plume Surface Studies (SCALPSS 1.1) will capture video and still images of the area under the lander from when the engine plume first disturbs the lunar surface through engine shutdown. Long-focal-length cameras will determine the pre-landing surface topography. Photogrammetry will be used to reconstruct the changing surface during landing. Understanding the physics of rocket exhaust on the regolith and the displacement of dust, gravel, and rocks is critical to understanding how to avoid kicking up surface materials during the terminal phase of flight/landing on the Moon and other celestial bodies.
* The AstroVault, developed by Quantum Aerospace and Space Ark Media, is a lunar archive designed to preserve human culture, art, music, and knowledge for future generations. Encoded in an ultra-durable format, it will serve as a long-term repository of literature, scientific discoveries, and creative works, ensuring their preservation in the lunar environment.
* The Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) will generate a non-uniform electric field using varying high voltage on multiple electrodes. This traveling field, in turn, carries away the particles and has potential applications in thermal radiators, spacesuit fabrics, visors, camera lenses, solar panels, and many other technologies.
* The Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), which successfully received GPS and Galileo signals at lunar distances (in cis-lunar space and on the surface), thus proving the viability of the concept for lunar navigation.