Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander successfully touched down on the moon

Firefly Aerospace’s first attempt at landing on the moon was a success. The company, which is working with NASA under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program , announced early Sunday morning that its Blue Ghost lander softly touched down on the moon, and it’s upright and communicating with the team back home. Blue Ghost landed at 3:34AM ET in a region known as Mare Crisium. While Firefly’s lander isn’t the first commercial spacecraft to land on the moon, it is the first to land properly — Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus ended up on its side last year after a faster-than-planned descent. Blue Ghost and the NASA instruments it’s carrying are expected to remain in operation for about 14 Earth days. After that, lunar night will begin. If all goes as planned, the lander will capture images in the leadup to lunar night and a few hours after darkness falls, getting high-definition imagery of a total eclipse, the lunar sunset and other moments to document the behaviour of l ... Read full article.