‘Moon dust on our boots’: Privately owned robot lands on first attempt

A robotic spacecraft from an American start-up gently set down on a lava plain on the moon’s near side late on Sunday.

The Blue Ghost lander, built by Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas, touched down at 3.34am Florida-time (7.34pm AEDT).

Private lunar lander Blue Ghost’s shadow is seen on the moon’s surface after touching down.Credit: AP

“You all stuck the landing,” said Blue Ghost chief engineer Will Coogan during a livestream from the flight operations room.

A few minutes later, Firefly chief executive Jason Kim declared: “We got some moon dust on our boots.”

It was a remarkable success for the company, achieving what many others have not.

Among the countries, companies and organisations that have attempted to set down softly on the moon in the 21st century, only China can claim complete success on the first attempt.

Blue Ghost after touching down on the moon with a special delivery for NASA on Sunday. The moon’s surface and Earth are visible on the horizon, as well as Blue Ghost’s solar panel, X-band antenna (left) and LEXI payload (right).Credit: AP

Last year, two landers – one sent by JAXA, the Japanese space agency; the other by Intuitive Machines of Houston – did successfully land and continued working and communicating with Earth. But both toppled over, limiting what the spacecraft could accomplish.

Intuitive Machines was the first private company to successfully land on the moon. Firefly is now the second. Both are part of NASA’s efforts to harness private enterprise to reduce the cost of taking scientific and technological payloads to the moon.

The landing site lies in Mare Crisium, a flat plain formed from lava that filled and hardened inside a crater carved out by an ancient asteroid impact. Mare Crisium is in the north-east quadrant of the near side of the moon.

Staff at the Mission Control outside Austin, Texas, celebrate as lunar lander Blue Ghost touches down on the moon with a special delivery for NASA.Credit: AP

The mission is to last about 14 Earth days.

The lander is carrying 10 instruments for NASA as part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS. Several are focused on lunar dust, which is often sticky and sharp – a bane for machinery and a potential health issue for astronauts.

Firefly has won two more CLPS missions.

The second, scheduled to launch next year, is to land on the far side of the moon. The third, scheduled for 2028, is to investigate the Gruithuisen Domes, an unusual volcanic region on the near side of the moon.

The moon will continue to be a busy place. Another CLPS mission is just days away. Intuitive Machines’ second moon lander, Athena, is scheduled to land on Thursday.

And yet another spacecraft is also en route. On the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched Blue Ghost to orbit was Resilience, a lunar lander built by Ispace of Japan.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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