Absolute success: scientific probe Blue Ghost fell asleep forever on the Moon after productive two weeks of work

The American company Firefly Aerospace reported that on March 17 at 02:15 Moscow time, contact was lost with the Blue Ghost lunar landing module. Night had fallen on the Moon in the module’s landing zone, which the module would not be able to survive – it was not designed to withstand a two-week drop in temperature to -170 °C. This was a planned shutdown and marked the completely successful completion of the mission.

Image source: Firefly Aerospace

Aside from the partially successful February 2024 landing of Intuitive Machines’ Odyssey lander, Blue Ghost’s landing may justifiably be the first successful commercial lunar landing. Not only did Firefly Aerospace’s lander gently touch down on the lunar surface, it also captured an epic video of its descent—the first cinematic-quality video of its kind.

«”We’ve tested every system on the lander and simulated every mission scenario we could think of to get to this point,” Blue Ghost chief engineer Will Coogan said in a company press release announcing the end of the mission.

The module landed on the lunar surface on March 2, 2025, in the Mare Crisium region. The mission was carried out as part of NASA’s commercial cargo delivery program to the Moon. There were 10 agency instruments on board the device. All equipment fulfilled the mission programs, including the first-ever GPS operation on the Moon and deep drilling.

According to Firefly, the lander transmitted a total of 119 GB of data back to Earth, including 51 GB of science data. Blue Ghost’s final hours were productive. It captured video of the lunar sunset on March 16, giving NASA data on how lunar dust behaves due to solar forcing, and whether it creates the lunar horizon glow effect that astronauts may have seen during the Apollo 17 mission. After sunset, Blue Ghost operated for five hours of the lunar night, continuing to capture video to assess dust behavior after sunset.

With the Blue Ghost mission complete, the lunar expeditions are not over yet. Somewhere on the approach to the satellite is the Japanese Resilience lander of the Tokyo company ispace. It is expected that it will try to land on the lunar surface on June 5, 2025. The Firefly company will also make another flight to the Moon, but this will be in 2026. The mission promises to be exciting, because the landing on the surface of the satellite is expected on its far side.