NASA Celebrates First Success of Firefly’s 14-Day Moon Mission

All 10 payloads achieved 100 percent of their mission objectives during those two weeks, while also observing a solar eclipse and lunar sunset.

Private lunar lander Blue Ghost's shadow is seen on the moon's surface after touching down on the moon with a special delivery for NASA on March 2, 2025. NASA/Firefly Aerospace via AP

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) celebrated the first major success of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative on March 18 with the completion and slight extension of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost One mission to the lunar surface.

NASA and Firefly officials touted the success as further validation of both the agency’s decision to empower the private sector and that private partner’s spacefaring work. 

“I think that Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission One is what I would call an existence proof of how we wanted commercial lunar payload services to work,” Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration, science mission directorate, NASA headquarters in Washington, said during a post-mission press conference. 

“It was a real demonstration of how NASA and commercial companies are working together to explore these new regions of the moon and make them accessible for the United States.”

Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander achieved the first successful commercial moon landing on March 2, executing a soft, upright landing on a northeast region of the moon’s nearside called the Mare Crisium basin.

NASA and Firefly officials confirmed that it was a record-setting mission. It carried the highest number of payloads to the lunar surface on any CLPS mission yet, 10, and recorded the longest stretch—two weeks— of commercial activity on the lunar surface.

Not only was it Firefly’s first spaceflight, it was a mission to the moon.

“When this small team of fireflies started in 2021 on this program, they had never built or flown a spacecraft before,” said Firefly CEO Jason Kim. “This was their first shot, and they took Blue Ghost on a 45-day orbital journey, landed stable and upright, and operated her for more than two weeks on the moon.”

“Achieving these milestones on the first attempt is a feat that even eluded nations,” he said. “Firefly proved that space exploration is limitless, even for the smallest of teams.”

According to Firefly’s spacecraft program director Ray Allensworth, Blue Ghost One landed about 50 meters outside of its original 100-meter radius, but once that new landing site was selected, the autonomous landing system placed the lander within one meter of that exact spot.

All 10 payloads achieved 100 percent of their mission objectives during those two weeks, and they were able to gather extraordinary data while recording a solar eclipse from the lunar surface while folks back on Earth witnessed a lunar eclipse.

The robotics were also able to put in some overtime, observing and taking readings through a lunar sunset and operating for several hours into the lunar night as the progression of lunar phases moved the lander into extended darkness.

Allensworth said that her team will try to reawaken Blue Ghost 1 when sunlight returns to the basin in April. While she remains optimistic about the potential restart, she clarified that the lander was not built to survive the extreme freeze of the lunar night.

Along with spectacular images of the lunar surface, the solar eclipse, and the lunar sunset, NASA and Firefly collected more than 119 gigabytes of data from the lunar surface, 51 of which were science and technology data and another 60 gigabytes during the 45-day journey from the Earth to the moon.

Mission objectives included successfully operating a radiation-tolerant computer during the lander’s transit through Earth’s Van Allen belts and on the lunar surface for the entire mission in order to discover ways to mitigate radiation’s effects on computers and thereby make equipment safer and more cost-effective for future missions.

Another objective was to gather thermal data of the lunar environment, which Allensworth emphasized during the press conference would be important for future manned missions to the lunar south pole, despite Blue Ghost One landing far from it.

“The thermal data is definitely most applicable, particularly because of the presence of craters and more substantially in other areas of the moon,” she said. “The South Pole is a great example of a place that has a significant number of craters, and it will really significantly impact how any spacecraft, ours or other NASA missions interact and survive those temperature conditions.”

Firefly is already scheduled to fly two more missions to the moon as part of NASA’s CLPS program. Blue Ghost 2 is slated to launch in 2026, followed by Blue Ghost 3 in 2028.

Kim confirmed that their successful moonshot has resulted in an increase in business inquiries for future missions, and Firefly has begun to expand its facility but was unable to share the identity of any new clients,

He added that he saw no reason why his company’s partnership with NASA could not continue past Blue Ghost 3, both for missions on the moon and onto Mars. He affirmed that NASA and its support of national security will continue to be a primary partner for them going forward while balancing his company’s approach to them and toward commercial opportunities.

“NASA is always going to be a big part of Firefly business because we really believe in the NASA mission,” he said.

Firefly’s success comes amid yet another botched lunar landing by NASA’s CLPS partner, Intuitive Machines. The IM-2 mission lander Athena aimed for a spot on the lunar south pole only to follow its predecessing lander, Odysseus, in landing on its side with solar panels turned away from the sun. That mission was expected to last 10 days but ended hours after landing.

The IM-2 mission was not addressed during the press conference, but Adam Schlesinger, CLPS project manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, emphasized that the agency’s commercial program is still in its early stages. 

“We’re in the very early innings for CLPS in general,” he said. “So I told our team earlier this week we have more task orders in front of us than we have behind us, and that goes for missions for Firefly as well.”