Firefly and NASA Cheer Blue Ghost’s Total Success

Firefly Aerospace’s first mission to the Moon was a complete success according to the company and its customer, NASA.  The Blue Ghost Mission-1 (BGM-1) lander operated for the entire 14-days of its expected lifetime, operating all 10 NASA experiments and transmitting amazing images of the lunar surface, a Sun-Earth eclipse, and lunar sundown.  BGM-1’s lifetime on the Moon may have come to an end, but analysis of the 51 gigabytes of science data it sent back is just beginning.

BGM-1 launched on January 15 and landed at Mare Crisium very early on March 2 after a 45-day journey. Video of the landing taken by onboard cameras was just the first of many dazzling images.

Watch Firefly land on the Moon! After identifying surface hazards and selecting a safe landing site, #BlueGhost landed directly over the target in Mare Crisium. A historic moment on March 2 we’ll never forget. We have Moon dust on our boots! #BGM1 pic.twitter.com/02DQJzn0hL

— Firefly Aerospace (@Firefly_Space) March 4, 2025

A “diamond ring” view of the Sun coming from behind the Earth after an eclipse on March 14, and lunar sunset with Venus visible between the Moon and Earth, are among the many other eye-catching photos.

Imagery was only one aspect of BGM-1’s mission. Part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, BGM-1 carried 10 NASA experiments. All operated successfully.

• Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR)
• Radiation Tolerant Computer System (RadPC)
• Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC)
• Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS)
• Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-Ray Imager (LEXI)
• Lunar PlanetVac (LPV)
• Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER)
• Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) 1.1
• Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS)
• Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE)

NASA Science Mission Directorate Associate Administrator Nicky Fox said BGM-1 “marks the longest surface duration commercial mission on the Moon to date, collecting extraordinary science data that will benefit humanity for decades to come.”

NASA began the CLPS program in 2018 to encourage commercial companies to participate in lunar exploration through Public-Private Partnerships. NASA buys services to deliver NASA science and technology payloads to the lunar surface. The companies design, build and launch the landers and are expected to find non-NASA customers to close the business case. NASA paid Firefly $101 million for delivery services and spent another $44 million on its 10 payloads.

Fox said with CLPS, “American companies are now at the forefront of an emerging lunar economy that lights the way for the agency’s exploration goals on the Moon and beyond.”

BGM-1 is the first fully successful commercial lunar lander. At a post-mission news conference yesterday, Firefly CEO Jason Kim exclaimed they “completed 100% of our mission objectives after more than 14 days of surface operations marking the longest commercial operations on the Moon to date.”

Getting to the Moon can take days, weeks or months depending on what trajectory is used.  Kim credited the decision to spend 45 days on the journey for part of BGM-1’s success. It’s a “Goldilocks approach of not too fast, not too slow, just right” that “gives everyone more confidence” that they can do it again on future Blue Ghost missions for NASA and commercial customers.

One surprise was the thermal environment. BGM-1 landed near a crater and Ray Allensworth, Firefly’s Spacecraft Program Director, said they were surprised at the interaction of the Sun with the crater and their spacecraft, which got a lot hotter than expected at lunar noon. The data will be especially important for NASA’s Artemis program because they plan to land astronauts near the Moon’s South Pole, which is covered with craters. “It will really significantly impact how spacecraft, any spacecraft, ours or other NASA missions, interact and survive those temperature conditions.”

At the American Astronautical Society’s Goddard Space Science Symposium in Greenbelt, MD, today, Firefly’s Corporate Chief Engineer Jordi Paredes Garcia said the lander got up to 250ºF at lunar noon and down to -275ºF during the March 14 solar eclipse. They’d spent several years developing “precise thermal models” working with NASA, but didn’t take the Sun’s reflection from the crater into account. “Thermal management is something that for landers, and then for human exploration, is going to be a challenge.”

All of the Moon experiences 14 days of sunlight and 14 days of darkness except for permanently shadowed regions at the north and south poles.  There is no “dark” side, only the near-side that always faces Earth and the far-side that always faces away because the Moon is tidally locked to Earth.

Several countries have sent robotic spacecraft to the lunar surface starting with the United States and Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s. More recently, China has sent several to both the near- and far-sides of the Moon. All of those are large landers with radioisotope power systems that allow them to operate for long periods of time, surviving the bitter cold of the 14-day lunar nights. (Russia sent a lander to the Moon in 2023, but it crashed.)

Smaller, relatively less expensive landers that use solar power have become commonplace in recent years. They are designed to operate only for one lunar day when sunlight is available. The Indian and Japanese governments successfully landed Chandrayaan-3 and Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) in 2023 and 2024 respectively. SLIM surprised everyone by awakening more than once.

Commercial landers have had less success until now.

Israeli non-profit SpaceIL’s Beresheet in 2019 and Japanese ispace’s HAKUTO-R in 2023 crashed.  The U.S. Astrobotic’s Peregrine didn’t reach the Moon in 2024. Another U.S. company, Intuitive Machines, landed IM-1 in 2024 and IM-2 just two weeks ago, but both tipped over and little science was accomplished. Peregrine, IM-1 and IM-2 also were part of NASA’s CLPS initiative. NASA and the companies consider them successes even though they didn’t meet their primary objectives because they further the goal of creating a lunar economy through lessons that were learned.

Japan’s ispace has a second lander, RESILIENCE, and micro-rover, TENACIOUS, on the way to the Moon right now.  The SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon mission launched as a rideshare on the same Falcon 9 as BGM-1, but is taking a longer route. It will land on June 6 Japan Standard Time (June 5 EDT). ispace posts progress reports on its website and X (@ispace_inc).