Private Moon Landing Success and NASA's Commercial Program

A private spacecraft carrying several science experiments has successfully landed on the moon.

The lander, called Blue Ghost, was built by the American company Firefly Aerospace. The spacecraft touched down March 2 on the part of the moon’s near side called Mare Crisium. The near side of the moon is the side facing Earth.

Officials at Firefly’s Mission Control center near Austin, Texas, confirmed the successful landing. The chief engineer for the Blue Ghost mission, Will Coogan, announced to excited workers: “We’re on the moon.”

The officials said the spacecraft landed in the right position and was operating normally. The successful touchdown makes Firefly the first private company to land a spacecraft on the moon without crashing or having a major problem.

Only five countries can claim successful moon landings: Russia, the United States, China, India and Japan.

Blue Ghost is named after a rare kind of firefly found in the U.S. The four-legged lander is two meters tall and 3.5 meters wide. It launched in mid-January from Florida, carrying 10 experiments for the American space agency NASA.

In a statement, NASA said the 10 experiments are designed to operate on the surface of the moon for one lunar day, which is about 14 Earth days. The Associated Press reported that NASA paid $101 million for the spacecraft and $44 million for the equipment it carried.

It was the third mission under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The program aims to turn over the country’s major space missions to private companies to reduce costs. Several other companies are part of the program.

Another lander, called Athena, is set to attempt a moon landing on March 6. That four-meter-tall spacecraft was built and operated by Houston-based Intuitive Machines. It will land on another part of the moon, about 160 kilometers from the lunar south pole.

A third lander from private Japanese company ispace will attempt a moon landing in about three months. The lander, called Resilience, shared its rocket ride with Blue Ghost. But it took a longer path to the moon. The company is also attempting to land on the moon for the second time. Its first lander crashed in 2023.

NASA has said it aims to have two private landers launch to the moon each year, realizing some missions will fail. The space agency’s top science officer is Nicky Fox. She told the AP the latest launches “open up a whole new way for us to get more science to space and to the moon."

In the past, NASA’s successful moon landings involving astronauts cost billions of dollars. But Firefly chief Jason Kim said the private companies now building and launching spacecraft have a limited budget and the spacecraft operate robotically.

Kim said everything went just as planned with Blue Ghost’s landing. “We got some moon dust on our boots," he added.