It was a perfect moon landing.
Although no easy feat, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander descended in a controlled fashion, and without mishap, to the lunar surface on March 2, becoming the first commercial spacecraft to have a fully successful landing on the moon. And NASA cameras affixed to the bottom of the robotic craft filmed footage of the descent and dusty touchdown.
The NASA instrument, called Stereo Cameras for Lunar-Plume Surface Studies, or (SCALPSS), captured 3,000 frames during the operation. This "first-of-its-kind" imagery will inform future landing missions — both crewed and robotic — about how plumes of moon dust behave as thrusters file into the lunar regolith, and how such plumes impact nearby craft or infrastructure.
The view shown in the NASA video below begins when the squat Blue Ghost craft — 6.6 feet tall and 11.5 feet wide — is 91 feet, or 28 meters, from the lunar ground.
"As the descent continues, the interaction becomes increasingly complex, with the plumes vigorously kicking up the lunar dust, soil, and rocks — collectively known as regolith," NASA explained. "After touchdown, the thrusters shut off and the dust settles. The lander levels a bit and the lunar terrain beneath and immediately around it becomes visible."
While this landing went smoothly, landing on the moon still remains daunting, largely because it's a world with virtually no atmosphere to slow spacecraft down. A craft must plummet to the surface almost perfectly, as thrusters fire to slow its descent onto a surface teeming with pits and craters. Although Chinese and Indian craft have had recent landing successes, the U.S. commercial spacecraft Odysseus sustained damage while landing awkwardly in 2024, and another of the company's landers fell to its side in 2025. In 2024, a Japanese craft landed upside down, on its head.
Blue Ghost's mission was funded by NASA as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which it hopes will set the stage for a U.S. lunar presence. In the coming years, NASA intends to land astronauts on the moon, too. The space agency currently expects to bring astronauts to the moon in mid-2027, wherein they'll spend a week exploring eerie craters of the moon's resource-rich south pole.
Topics NASA
