Firefly's Blue Ghost sends first image after landing on Moon

Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost or simply Blue Ghost captured and sent to Earth first image soon after successfully landing on Moon Sunday March 02, 2025

[First image captured by Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, taken shortly after confirmation of a successful landing at Mare Crisium on the Moon’s near side.]

Blue Ghost Moon Mission: Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost or simply Blue Ghost captured and sent to Earth first image soon after successfully landing on Moon Sunday March 02, 2025.

Carrying a suite of NASA science and technology, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1 successfully landed at 3:34 a.m. EST Sunday near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium, a more than 300-mile-wide basin located in the northeast quadrant of the Moon's near side.

The 10 NASA science and technology instruments aboard the lander will operate on the lunar surface for approximately one lunar day, or about 14 Earth days.

Shortly after confirmation of a successful landing at Mare Crisium on the Moon’s near side, Blue Ghost the first image of Moon it captured.

About Blue Ghost Moon Mission

Blue Ghost landing is the second lunar delivery of NASA science and tech instruments as part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

The Blue Ghost lander is in an upright and stable configuration, and the successful Moon delivery is part of NASA's CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign. This is the first CLPS delivery for Firefly, and their first Moon landing.

Since its launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 15, 2025, Blue Ghost traveled more than 2.8 million miles, downlinked more than 27 GB of data, and supported several science operations.

This included signal tracking from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) at a record-breaking distance of 246,000 miles with the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment payload – showing NASA can use the same positioning systems on Earth when at the Moon, NASA said.

Science conducted during the journey also included radiation tolerant computing through the Van Allen Belts with the Radiation-Tolerant Computer System payload and measurements of magnetic field changes in space with the Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder payload.

To date, five vendors have been awarded 11 lunar deliveries under CLPS and are sending more than 50 instruments to various locations on the Moon, including the lunar South Pole.

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