How Firefly rigorously approached mission planning and testing to achieve the first soft Moon landing for the US in the 21st century

The Blue Ghost lander’s shadow standing tall on the Moon, lying under a black sky with our Earth hanging by the distance; Inset left: Blue Ghost with its X-band antenna deployed; Inset right: The Blue Ghost lander on Earth prior to launch. Images: Firefly

On March 2 at 8:34 UTC, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost spacecraft part of NASA’s CLPS program successfully completed its 12-minute descent from a 20-kilometer altitude point in its orbit to autonomously guide itself to a soft, upright touchdown on the Moon amid the lava plains of Mare Crisium. Notably, the lander only used its thrusters and not the main engine for the final hundred seconds or so of its descent. Shortly after landing, Firefly began commanding the spacecraft, including deploying the high-bandwidth X-band communications antenna. Until March 16, the end of the local lunar day, Firefly will operate the 10 NASA payloads onboard Blue Ghost and send us high-definition pictures and videos. ✨

The $101 million CLPS contracted Blue Ghost makes Firefly the first private company in the world to soft land on the Moon for real since Intuitive Machines’ falsely regarded soft landing was a rather hard one that literally broke a leg, tipped the spacecraft over, and didn’t meet majority of the mission’s technical and scientific objectives. Firefly has been careful with their communications, calling itself “the first commercial company in history to achieve a fully successful Moon landing” so that it may humbly flaunt Blue…