The Moon is set to witness a historic moment as Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 gets ready to land on the surface of the Moon on Sunday, March 2, 2025 at around 12:20 PM. The lander developed by a company in the United States is destined for Mare Crisium, a relatively featureless plain created by the freezing of vast lava floods in a 345-mile-wide structure, which was left when a massive asteroid hit the Moon. This mission is an important part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which aims to involve private companies in lunar exploration and research.
Firefly Aerospace has been awarded a $93.3 million contract by NASA to carry 10 scientific and technological payloads to the Moon. As reported, NASA is going to pay Firefly a total of $101.5 million if all the payloads make it to the surface of the Moon. But in the event of failure, the final payment may be revised as follows.
The trip began on January 15, 2025, when Blue Ghost was launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It flew together with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Resilience (Hakuto M2) mission. The lander was injected into lunar orbit on February 13 and the stage was set for its final descent and landing on May 1.
When it arrives on the Moon, Blue Ghost will carry out surface operations for one full lunar daylight period, which is approximately 14 Earth days. It may stay active for a short time after sunset depending on power sources and thermal environment.
The Blue Ghost lander has a box-shaped structural framework, four landing legs and two decks for scientific equipment mounting and has a payload capacity of 155 kg. It has solar panels that can generate 450 W of nominal power and up to 650 W at peak power. The lander’s thermal control system comprises heat pipes, radiators, multi layer insulation and active heaters to support the extreme temperature extremes of the Moon.
For communication the lander provides 6Mbps downlink (with a peak of 10Mbps) and a 0.2 kbps uplink (which can peak at 2 kbps) to ensure that data can be sent from the surface of the Moon to Earth without any problem. If successful, the Blue Ghost will be one more step towards private lunar exploration by industry and open the door to many other commercial and scientific missions to the Moon. This mission is an example of a increasing role of private companies in the field of space research and exploration and defining the future of the lunar development.
