On Sunday, Firefly Aerospace, an American private space company, successfully landed its Blue Ghost spacecraft on the Moon! This means Firefly is the first commercial company ever to land on the Moon. They celebrated this big achievement on social media, saying, “We did it! This small landing on the Moon is a huge step for commercial space exploration. Congrats to everyone at Firefly, our partners, and NASA for making this happen!”
The mission, also known as “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” launched on January 15 using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It is part of a collaboration with NASA to reduce costs and help return astronauts to the Moon through the Artemis program.
Before landing, Firefly shared an update on social media, saying, “In just 2 hours, Blue Ghost will start its journey to the Moon’s Mare Crisium. There will be a short communication blackout while this happens. After that, we will check to make sure everything is okay!”
The Blue Ghost lander, which is about the size of a hippopotamus, is carrying 10 special tools. These include a lunar soil analyzer and a computer that can work in space radiation. It will also help test if a global satellite navigation system can work on the Moon.
One exciting task for the Blue Ghost is to record a lunar sunset, which will help scientists understand why dust lifts off the Moon’s surface, creating a glowing horizon. This mysterious glow was first seen by Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan.
This mission comes at a crucial time for NASA. There is discussion about possibly changing or even stopping the Artemis lunar program to focus more on exploring Mars, which is important to President Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
Leave a Reply