Case Study: Blue Ghost Mission 1, Anatomy of a Clean Landing
What did Firefly Aerospace do differently on Blue Ghost Mission 1, the only fully successful commercial lunar landing so far, and what does it teach buyers?
Chapter summary
Blue Ghost 1 launched on 15 January 2025, spent about six weeks in Earth orbit and lunar transit, landed upright in Mare Crisium on 2 March 2025 and operated all ten NASA payloads for about 14 days, through a lunar sunset and into the night.
Key takeaways
- 1
Four choices stand out: a flat, well-mapped equatorial site rather than the rough polar terrain; a long, slow trajectory that left time to check systems; conservative descent with terrain-relative navigation that worked; and a lander designed around NASA's payload list rather than around a business case for many customers.
- 2
For buyers, the lesson is that site choice and margins matter more than ambition on a first landing.
Key figures in this chapter
- 2 Mar 2025
- landing in Mare Crisium
- 10
- NASA payloads, all operated
- ~14 days
- of surface operations
- ~$1.0–1.1M
- per kg of NASA payload
Source: NASA; Firefly; Setcoin calculation
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