A four-legged robot from Texas landed squarely on the Moon on 2 March, becoming the first commercial spacecraft to execute a lunar landing without falling over or crashing. The lander, known as Blue Ghost and built by Firefly Aerospace, based in Cedar Park, Texas, aims to spend two weeks conducting science experiments provided by NASA.
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Blue Ghost touched down in the Mare Crisium region of the Moon at 2.34 a.m. Texas time. “We’re on the Moon again,” said Vanessa Wyche, the acting associate administrator of NASA in Washington, DC, at a jubilant post-landing press conference.
Other companies have tried to land on the Moon before, but their craft have been lost in space or crashed while attempting to touch down. Last year, the Houston-based company Intuitive Machines managed to land its Odysseus spacecraft, but it hit the ground so hard that it broke a leg and tipped over on its side.
After launching on 15 January, Blue Ghost appears to have pulled off the complex sequence of autonomous manoeuvres required to approach and land on the Moon. Its first images showed the probe sitting upright on the grey surface, and included an evocative shot of its shadow on the Moon as Earth gleamed in the sky above.
The landing is a much-needed win for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme, which began in 2018 when the agency began contracting with aerospace companies to fly scientific instruments to the Moon. Blue Ghost is the third mission in this series; the fourth, which is the second attempt from Intuitive Machines, aims to land near the lunar south pole on 6 March.
“We are starting to hit our cadence,” said Nicola Fox, head of NASA’s science mission directorate.
Blue Ghost captured its first sunrise on the lunar surface after a successful landing.Credit: Firefly Aerospace
