Blue Ghost had its eyes wide open during its epic moon landing last weekend.
On Sunday (March 2), Blue Ghost — built and operated by the Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace — became just the second private spacecraft ever to soft-land on the moon, coming to rest in the near side’s Mare Crisium (“Sea of Crises”) region.
We can now relive Blue Ghost’s historic descent, thanks to stunning footage captured by the lander.
“Watch Firefly land on the moon! After identifying surface hazards and selecting a safe landing site, BlueGhost landed directly over the target in Mare Crisium. A historic moment on March 2 we’ll never forget. We have moon dust on our boots!” the company wrote today in an X post that shared a nearly three-minute video of the descent and landing.
That video provides some incredible details, including high-rising clouds of lunar dust kicked up by Blue Ghost’s thrusters as the lander neared the surface. Touchdown occurred with the sun low in the lunar sky, giving us all great views of Blue Ghost’s shadow as the lander settled into its new home.
Related: ‘We’re on the moon!’ Private Blue Ghost moon lander aces historic lunar landing for NASA
The car-sized Blue Ghost launched on Jan. 15 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying 10 science and technology experiments for NASA.
The lander’s mission is part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which puts NASA science gear on private moon landers. The goal is to gather a wealth of cost-effective data ahead of the Artemis astronauts’ arrival on the lunar surface in coming years.
If all goes according to plan, Blue Ghost and its payloads will operate on the lunar surface for one lunar day, which is about two Earth weeks. The solar-powered lander will shut down shortly after the sun sets over Mare Crisium.
Blue Ghost is part of a wave of private space exploration that’s now breaking over lunar shores. For example, Intuitive Machines, the company that pulled off the first-ever private moon landing is poised to repeat the feat in February 2024; its Athena lander will land on Thursday (March 6) near the lunar south pole, if all goes according to plan.
And Resilience, a lander built by Tokyo-based ispace, launched on the same Falcon 9 that lofted Blue Ghost. Resilience is hitting all of its marks during its long, looping trek to the moon and will attempt its own touchdown on June 5, ispace announced on Monday (March 3).
