Firefly Aerospace’s privately built Blue Ghost lunar lander is set to touchdown in less than 12 hours, early in the morning on March 2nd. Over the last month and a half, the spacecraft made its way to the Moon and began lowering its orbit in preparation for the upcoming landing.
By now, Blue Ghost has traveled millions of miles and downlinked more than 27 GB of data. Included has been some great video of the Moon’s surface.
Less Than 12 Hours
The last official update from Firefly regarding the specific landing time came a few days ago on February 26th. Here the company tweeted saying, “That feeling you get when you look out the window and realize you’re almost home! T-4 days until we land in the Moon. Blue Ghost will reach her final destination no earlier than 2:34 am CST on March 2. We’ll start the joint livestream with NASA at 1:20 am CST, approximately 75 minutes before we touch down on the surface.”
Blue Ghost launched back on Jan. 15, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The lander is carrying a suite of 10 NASA scientific investigations and technology demonstrations, which will provide insights into the Moon’s environment and test technologies to support future astronauts landing safely on the lunar surface, as well as Mars.
In just the last week alone, the lander and teams on the ground have been very busy preparing for the upcoming mission milestone. Late last month, the Firefly team completed another lunar orbit maneuver with a 3 minute, 18 second burn at 3:09 am in the morning. This maneuver moved the lander from a high elliptical orbit to a much lower elliptical orbit around the Moon. Shortly after the burn, Blue Ghost captured incredible footage of the Moon’s far side, about 120 km above the surface.
In this orbit, the team experienced planned rolling comms blackouts as Blue Ghost goes around the far side of the Moon. Next, Firefly performed a 16-second burn that inserted Blue Ghost into a near-circular low lunar orbit with a 100-km perilune (the closest point to the Moon’s surface). This put the spacecraft in prime position to perform a Descent Orbit Insertion as planned on March 2.
Footage showing the Earth rising and setting behind the Moon was captured by Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander shortly after the second lunar orbit maneuver on February 18. Blue Ghost’s solar panel, X-band antenna (left), and LEXI payload (right) on the top deck is also shown.
Even more recently, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander captured more footage of the Moon during its third lunar orbit maneuver on February 24 that inserted the spacecraft in a near-circular low lunar orbit. The video, sped up by 10X, was taken about 100 km above the lunar surface, showing the far side of the Moon and a top-down view of Blue Ghost’s RCS thrusters (center) and radiator panels on each side. They highlighted that the radiator panels are moving nominally to protect Blue Ghost’s subsystems from extreme temperatures.
At this point, teams are preparing the final preparations for descent and touchdown. If successful, this would be the second time a privately made spacecraft touched down on the Moon’s surface. The first was the IM-1 mission, which managed to touch down but not exactly like the company had hoped. While that lander is very different in design when compared to Blue Ghost, it still highlights the challenges of attempting to land on the Moon.
That being said, at this point in the mission Blue Ghost is already better off than the IM-1 lander as it’s not missing any core systems/software related to landing operations. The IM-1 lander ended up having to use a backup navigation system, resulting in it coming in to land much faster than planned. Touchdown broke one of its landing legs and the whole lander tipped over.
As for Blue Ghost, the lander is not nearly as top heavy and if everything goes to plan, will make a soft vertical touchdown on the surface. During the final hour of descent, Blue Ghost uses vision-based terrain relative navigation and hazard avoidance to measure the lander’s position and identify craters, slopes, and rocks before selecting the final hazard-free target within the landing zone. Blue Ghost’s RCS thrusters pulse as needed throughout the descent for a soft landing.
The final hour is where practically all of the most important landing operations begin. Starting 63 minutes before touchdown, the lander will complete the descent orbit insertion burn around 100km above the ground. Once the burn is complete, it will coast with the engines off while vision-based terrain relative navigation measures the vehicle’s position. This will lower the lander down to around 20km over the next 50 minutes. With only 11 minutes left until landing, Blue Ghost will use all engines to reduce orbital velocity from 1.7 km/s to 40 m/s and position itself above the target landing site.
With just over a minute left, the main engine shuts off and RCS thrusters pulse as needed to control descent to around 10 meters. In the final seconds Blue Ghost descends at a constant 1m/s until reaching the lunar surface. Shock absorbing legs stabilize Blue Ghost and contact sensors on footpads signal engine shutdown. Something we can hope to see very soon.
Mission Overview
Blue Ghost will land near a volcanic feature within Mare Crisium, a large basin located in the northeast quadrant of the Moon’s near side (when observing the Moon from Earth’s northern hemisphere). Formerly an ancient asteroid impact site, Mare Crisium was created by volcanic eruptions that flooded the basin with basaltic lava about 3 billion years ago. This unique landing site will allow Firefly’s payload partners to gather critical data about the Moon’s regolith, geophysical characteristics, and the interaction of solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field.
One of the main goals of Blue Ghost Mission 1 is to deliver 10 science and technology instruments to the lunar surface as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. With the lander already over a month into its mission, some of these payloads have gathered some valuable data.
In a statement NASA confirmed, “All 10 NASA instruments on this flight are currently healthy and ready to operate on the lunar surface. The payloads that are able to power on and operate have also collected some noteworthy data during lunar transit” they said.
In regard to the noteworthy data, the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment acquired and tracked Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals for the first time in lunar orbit – a new record. This achievement, peaking at 246,000 miles, suggests that Earth-based GNSS constellations can be used for navigation in transit to, around, and potentially on the Moon. It also demonstrates the power of using multiple GNSS constellations together, such as GPS and Galileo, to perform navigation. After lunar landing, this system will operate for 14 days and attempt to break another record – first reception of GNSS signals on the lunar surface.
In addition, The Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-Ray Imager or LEXI, telescope was turned on successfully shortly after launch on Jan. 15. The instrument has operated for several hours every day conducting checkouts and initial commissioning, operating for a total of more than 50 hours so far in preparation for collecting images from the lunar surface.
Looking at the lander itself, standing 2 m (6.6 ft) tall and 3.5 m (11.5 ft) wide, Blue Ghost is designed for stability with shock absorbing feet, a low center of mass, and a wide footprint. Blue Ghost’s core components, including the panels, struts, legs, harnesses, avionics, batteries, and thrusters, were built using many of the same flight-proven technologies common to all of Firefly’s launch and orbital vehicles.
Some of the objectives of the mission are to investigate heat flow from the lunar interior, plume-surface interactions, crustal electric and magnetic fields. It will also take X-ray images of the Earth’s magnetosphere. Technology tests include regolith sampling, regolith adherence, Global Navigation Satellite System abilities, radiation tolerant computing, and dust mitigation using electrodynamic fields.
Already there are at least two more Blue Ghost missions scheduled for the future. Firefly was awarded two additional NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services task orders to provide payload services in lunar orbit and on the lunar surface in 2026, utilizing a two-stage spacecraft configuration with Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander stacked on an Elytra Dark orbital vehicle. Elytra vehicle will first deploy Blue Ghost and the European Space Agency’s Lunar Pathfinder satellite in lunar orbit. Blue Ghost will then touch down on the far side of the Moon and operate government and commercial payloads for more than 10 days on the surface. Elytra will remain in lunar orbit to provide long-haul communications and enable radio frequency calibration services for NASA’s technology.
They highlight that the payloads flying on Blue Ghost Mission 2 will pave the way for a lasting lunar presence by enabling communications for future spacecraft, robots, and human explorers. With payloads from NASA, the European Space Agency, and Australia, this international mission is hoping to provide further insights into the geological properties of the Moon and its minerals that can support lunar infrastructure and habitation. The payloads will also measure radio emissions across solar system to unlock insights about the origins of the universe.
Conclusion
We are less than 12 hours away from the scheduled touchdown of the Blue Ghost lunar lander. If all goes well, it will then spend the next 14 days within Mare Crisium conducting science and sending data back to Earth.