On March 2, 2025, 2:34 am CST Firefly Aerospace mission control reported that the Blue Ghost lander had successfully landed on the moon’s surface becoming the first commercial mission to land upright.
Thirty four minutes later the image from the surface of the moon was revealed. Firefly said “the image shows the Moon’s surface and a top-down view of the lander’s RCS thrusters (center) with a sun glare on the right side.”
A couple of hours later the company released a couple more images including this stories featured image along with the following which “shows the Moon’s surface, Earth on the horizon, and the lander’s top deck with its solar panel, X-band antenna (left), and LEXI payload (right) in the view.”
Now that the lander is on the surface, commissioning is underway. Over the course of a lunar day, about 14 Earth days, 10 NASA instruments will conduct a variety of research tasks.
Also onboard Blue Ghost are three Canadian payloads supported by the Canadian Space Agency. Canadensys has a narrow field-of-view sample imaging system. NGC Aerospace has a global lunar navigation system and Integrity Testing Laboratory has will test material samples tested for lunar dust adherence.
Blue Ghost will take high resolution images of a total eclipse from the Moon on March 14 as the Earth blocks the sun. Then on March 16 it will capture the lunar sunset and operate for several hours.
Watch a replay of the Blue Ghost mission 1 landing
