A commercial spacecraft carrying NASA experiments successfully touched down on the moon's surface early Sunday morning, ushering in a new phase of private space exploration.
American firm Firefly Aerospace, which livestreamed the descent of its Blue Ghost lunar lander, said the craft arrived on the moon's surface at 3:34 a.m. EST.
"You all stuck the landing. We're on the moon," Blue Ghost chief engineer Will Coogan said on the livestream, eliciting cheers from the mission control room.
Several companies have attempted commercial lunar landings in recent years. A spacecraft sent to the moon by Houston-based Intuitive Machines last year stopped operating after landing on its side, and in 2023 a lander launched by the Japanese company ispace crashed onto the lunar surface.
Firefly Aerospace, which is headquartered in Cedar Park, Texas, said Blue Ghost's smooth touchdown makes it the "first commercial company in history to achieve a fully successful soft-landing on the Moon."
The mission occurred as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, wherein the space agency contracts with private companies to send scientific instruments and other technology to the lunar surface. It is also part of NASA's Artemis program, which intends to send astronauts back to the moon for the first time in decades.
Blue Ghost is carrying 10 NASA experiments on board, including a drill to measure lunar heat flow, an instrument to collect rock samples and an X-ray imager to study how Earth's magnetic field is impacted by cosmic forces such as solar wind. The experiments are expected to operate for 14 days — or roughly one lunar day.
Firefly said the lander would also capture high-definition imagery of the March 14 total eclipse, when the Earth will pass between the moon and the sun.
Shortly after landing on Sunday, Blue Ghost began beaming back images from the moon, including one of its thrusters illuminated by the glare of the sun.
The spacecraft launched on Jan. 15 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It was one of two lunar landers on the rocket, alongside another space lander called Resilience that is expected to land on the moon in late May or early June.
Blue Ghost traveled more than 2.8 million miles over 45 days to reach its destination. It touched down beside the moon's Mons Latreille volcanic feature, in the lunar plain called Mare Crisium.
Copyright 2025 NPR