Firefly Aerospace, a private company in the United States, announced on the 2nd that its developed lunar lander Blue Ghost successfully landed on the lunar surface on the 2nd. Blue Ghost will carry out a number of tasks on the moon to help humans further understand the lunar environment and prepare for future human lunar missions.
According to the Firefly company's official website, Blue Ghost confirmed a successful landing at 2:34 a.m. Central Time on the 2nd (16:34 p.m. Beijing Time on the 2nd) in a basin called the Sea of Crisis in the northeastern part of the lunar front. Subsequently, Blue Ghost sent back the first lunar image taken after the successful landing.
The Firefly company's official website said that the company became the first commercial company in history to achieve a "completely successful lunar landing", and "this small step on the moon represents a big step for commercial exploration." In February last year, the U.S. Intuitive Machines' lunar lander Odysseus landed on the moon, but flipped over when it landed on the lunar surface, and the mission ended ahead of schedule.
Blue Ghost and the lunar lander Perseverance of Japanese space technology company i-Space were launched on the same rocket from Florida, the United States on January 15. Perseverance will fly for a while before landing at another location on the moon.
The Blue Ghost carries 10 NASA scientific and technological instruments, and will carry out a number of tasks after landing on the moon, including lunar underground drilling, regolith sample collection, radiation resistance calculation, etc. These scientific data will help humans further understand the lunar environment and how space weather and other cosmic forces affect the earth, and prepare for future human lunar missions.
Firefly is one of the lunar lander contractors for NASA's Lunar Commercial Launch Services Program, which aims to deliver scientific experiments and cargo to the lunar surface and lay the foundation for the US Artemis lunar landing program.
