A private lunar lander carrying a drill, vacuum and other experiments for Nasa has touched down on the moon, the latest in a string of companies looking to kick-start business on Earth’s celestial neighbour ahead of astronaut missions.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander descended from lunar orbit on autopilot on Sunday, aiming for the slopes of an ancient volcanic dome in an impact basin on the moon’s north-eastern edge of the near side.
Confirmation of touchdown came from the company’s mission control outside Austin, Texas, following the action some 225,000 miles away.
“We’re on the moon,” mission control reported, adding the lander is “stable”.
A smooth, upright landing makes Firefly – a start-up founded a decade ago – the first private outfit to put a spacecraft on the moon without crashing or falling over.
Even countries have faltered, with only five claiming success: Russia, the US, China, India and Japan.
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Two other companies’ landers are hot on Blue Ghost’s heels, with the next one expected to join it on the moon later this week.
Launched in mid-January from Florida, the 6ft 6in lander carried 10 experiments to the moon for Nasa. The space agency paid 101 million US dollars (£80 million) for the delivery, plus 44 million dollars (£35 million) for the science and technology on board.
It is the third mission under Nasa’s commercial lunar delivery programme, intended to ignite a lunar economy of competing private businesses while scouting around before astronauts show up later this decade.
The demos should get two weeks of run time, before lunar daytime ends and the lander shuts down.
It has a vacuum to suck up moon dirt for analysis and a drill to measure temperature as deep as 10ft below the surface.
Also on board: a device for eliminating abrasive lunar dust – a scourge for Nasa’s long-ago Apollo moonwalkers, who got it caked all over their spacesuits and equipment.
On its way to the moon, Blue Ghost beamed back exquisite pictures of the home planet. The lander continued to stun once in orbit around the moon, with detailed shots of the moon’s grey, pockmarked surface.
Staff at mission control celebrate as the lander Blue Ghost touched down on the moon (Nasa/Firefly Aerospace/AP)
At the same time, an on-board receiver tracked and acquired signals from the US GPS and European Galileo constellations, an encouraging step forward in navigation for future explorers.
The landing sets the stage for a fresh crush of visitors angling for a piece of lunar business.
Another lander – a 15ft device built and operated by Houston-based Intuitive Machines – is due to land on the moon on Thursday. It is aiming for the bottom of the moon, just 100 miles from the south pole. That is closer to the pole than the company got last year with its first lander, which broke a leg and tipped over.
Despite the tumble, the Intuitive Machines lander put the US back on the moon for the first time since Nasa astronauts closed the Apollo programme in 1972.
A third lander from the Japanese company ispace is still three months from landing. It shared a rocket ride with Blue Ghost from Cape Canaveral on January 15, taking a longer, windier route.
Like Intuitive Machines, ispace is also attempting to land on the moon for the second time. Its first lander crashed in 2023.
The moon is littered with wreckage not only from ispace, but dozens of other failed attempts over the decades.
Nasa wants to keep up a pace of two private lunar landers a year, realising some missions will fail, said the space agency’s top science officer Nicky Fox.
Unlike Nasa’s successful Apollo moon landings that had billions of dollars behind them and ace astronauts at the helm, private companies operate on a limited budget with robotic craft that must land on their own, said Firefly chief executive Jason Kim.
“Every time we go up, we’re learning from each other,” he said.