2nd March 2025: Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander softly touched down in Mare Crisium carrying 10 NASA instruments.
Firefly Has Been Added to Our Online Map of the Moon….
Firefly has completed a long awaited mission, which is of immense value to Lunar Resources Registry and Space Ventures Investors.
Our Virtual Payload on the Firefly Lander
Lunar Resources Registry and Copernic Space have completed a collaboration to send a virtual map of the Moon to the lunar surface on the Firefly landers, thanks to Lifeship. Copernic will verify ownership of the map through tokenization, marking a milestone in combining lunar exploration, education, and technology. The Lunar Resources Registry Educational Map, developed by Lunar Resources Registry, has been an invaluable tool since 2020, showcasing areas of potential interest on the Moon. This comprehensive map highlights all known past and current landers, discarded boosters, and the resting places of high-speed-impact probes from the Cold War era to modern Space 2.0 missions.
Back to Firefly
Below: Image from LRR’s online Map:
How it Started: Firefly Aerospace is a portfolio company of AE Industrial Partners (“AEI”), they are focused on delivering rapid, reliable, and affordable space access for government and commercial customers.
Firefly provides the space industry with small to medium-lift launch vehicles, lunar landers, and orbital vehicles from low Earth orbit to the surface of the Moon and beyond.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander has now a permanent home on the lunar surface with 10 NASA payloads and a plaque with every Firefly employee’s name. The mission aims to deliver reliable, affordable access to the Moon, and Firefly intends to help unlock access to the rest of the solar system.
The Successful Lunar Landing of Blue Ghost was a precise landing in Mare Crisium on March 2 at 2:34 a.m. CST, touching down within its 100-meter landing target next to a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille.
The lander stabilized using its shock-absorbing legs and confirmed its upright stance through touchdown and inertial readings.
Now the fun begins: Lunar Surface Operations. Following the landing, Firefly initiated communication with its Mission Operations Center in Cedar Park, Texas. Over the next 14 days, which is equivalent to a full lunar day, Blue Ghost will support NASA science and technology demonstrations. The surface operations include:
- Lunar subsurface drilling.
- Sample collection.
- X-ray imaging.
- Dust mitigation experiments.
Imagery and Observation: Firefly aims to capture high-definition imagery of a total eclipse when the Earth blocks the sun above the Moon’s horizon. On March 16, Blue Ghost plans to capture the lunar sunset, providing data on how lunar dust levitates due to solar influences and creating a lunar horizon glow, first documented by Eugene Cernan on Apollo 17. Additionally, Firefly will operate for several hours into the lunar night to capture imagery that observes how levitating dust behavior changes after sunset.
Commercial Cislunar Capabilities: Firefly is working towards completing more than 14 days of surface operations, raising the bar for commercial cislunar capabilities. NASA has entrusted more science data support to Firefly, which supports future human missions to the Moon and Mars.
Additional Science Operations: Science operations included signal tracking from the Global Navigation Satellite System at a record-breaking distance with the LuGRE payload, radiation-tolerant computing through the Van Allen Belts with the RadPC payload, and measurements of magnetic field changes with the LMS payload.
Updates: Firefly continues to provide regular updates on the Blue Ghost Mission 1 webpage and through NASA’s Artemis blog.