The Blue Ghost lander, built by Firefly Aerospace, launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, marking the second U.S. soft landing on the moon since the Apollo program. The mission is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which aims to leverage private companies for lunar exploration. Blue Ghost carries 10 NASA instruments, marking a significant step in lunar science and technological advancement.
An illustration of a private U.S. lander on the surface of the moon built by Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace . The company’s Blue Ghost lander is carrying a suite of scientific instruments to the moon, including an experiment to detect and use GPS satellite signals on the lunar surface.
In the classic country ballad “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” a cowboy receives a frightening vision: the devil’s herd of cows thundering through the clouds, chased by the souls of cowpokes who must “ride forever on that range up in the sky / on horses snorting fire.” At 1:11 A.M. EST on January 15 Blue Ghost, a lunar lander built by the Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace, rode its own fiery steed through the heavens, launching atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on a mission to become just the second U.S. soft landing on the moon since the end of the Apollo program. Over the next four weeks, that mission—called Ghost Riders in the Sky, or Blue Ghost Mission 1—will see its spacecraft orbit around Earth at farther and farther distances. Carrying a suite of NASA-sourced scientific instruments, Blue Ghost will then make a run at the moon. The mission is flying under the U.S. space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which is encouraging private firms to take over the delivery of such instruments and lunar supplies as part of the nation’s ambitious Artemis moon program. “ is kind of the gateway to our solar system; it’s this ‘easy’ spot to go to and learn how to be productive,” says Ray Allensworth, spacecraft program director at Firefly Aerospace. “The basic science that we’re gathering on these CLPS missions really has applications, not just to Artemis but also to becoming interplanetary.”. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.but has never flown anything to the moon before. It’s also another major test for CLPS, which will pay out as much as $2.6 billion to private companies for lunar deliveries. NASA hopes to save substantial money through the program. In February 2021 Firefly received a NASA contract for Blue Ghost Mission 1 that is now worth $101 million, less than the agency would have spent to build its own lunar lander. “A lander on the surface of the moon, done in the traditional way, is north of a half a billion .... I’ve never seen a quote that’s less,” says Thomas Zurbuchen, who led NASA’s Science Mission Directorate as its associate administrator from 2016 to 2022 and championed the development of CLPS. “Every one of these shots on goal is doing it without that overhead and with their own systems.” NASA also hopes that CLPS will increase the frequency of robotic moon missions. Blue Ghost is the third spacecraft launched under the CLPS banner since January 2024, and at least one more launch is on the books for later this year. Before CLPS, the last U.S. soft landings on the moon occurred during the Apollo program, which ended in 1972. “There’s a significant portion of NASA and the scientific community who have not been alive, or at least not in the workforce, to see a landing on the moon,” says lunar scientist Ryan Watkins, a program scientist at NASA’s Exploration Science Strategy and Integration Office. “To finally have a chance to get on the surface and get at some of these questions in situ is really exciting.” But in exchange for lower costs and faster turnaround times, NASA is letting private companies design and operate their own lunar landers—a trade-off that, on balance, boosts the odds for any given CLPS mission failing. From the program’s inception, NASA leaders, including Zurbuchen, have emphasized that each initial CLPS mission has a roughly 50–50 chance of success.. Last January the Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic launched a moon lander with an assortment of NASA and non-NASA payloads, only for the spacecraft to suffersoon after launch. Then, the following month, a robotic lander built by the Houston-based company Intuitive Machines flew a CLPS mission to the moon’s south polar region. Though the spacecraft survived the descent—“I want to work, but this is an experiment, and we don’t know that it’s going to work,” says Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the nonprofit Planetary Society. Standing about two meters tall and 3.5 meters wide—roughly the size of two Volkswagen Beetles parked side by side—Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander is designed to carry up to 150 kilograms (330 pounds) of payload to the moon’s surface. On Blue Ghost Mission 1, the lander is flying 10 NASA instruments, the largest number of agency payloads yet launched on a single CLPS mission. For Firefly’s corps of engineers, many of whom are still in their 20s, building Blue Ghost has amounted to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—and challenge. “It’s kind of mind-blowing,” Allensworth says. “It is really special, but it also can be scary at times because none of us have built a lunar lander befor
Space Exploration Lunar Lander Commercial Lunar Payload Services Artemis Program Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost NASA Apollo Program Private Spaceflight
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