We're on the moon!' Private Blue Ghost moon lander aces historic lunar landing for NASA

[Admin]

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost spacecraft made history today (March 2), becoming just the second private vehicle ever to soft-land on the moon.

We're on the moon!' Private Blue Ghost moon lander aces historic lunar landing for NASA : Read more

 

[Joexo]

If it was 1975 I would've been more excited about this

 

[Joexo]

Still cool nonetheless

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Congrats to Firefly Aerospace.

Landing on the Moon is hard. Theirs is the first fully successful landing of a non-government space craft launched by a non-government launch provider.

I was particularly impressed by the statement that it landed on "a relatively flat, boulder-free stretch of lunar ground that Blue Ghost autonomously [emphasis added] selected as a safe landing spot." That is something we would not have been able to do in 1975. That is something that we will need for robotic missions to not just the Moon, but to Mars and wherever else we want to put instruments and even manufacturing facilities without risking human crews (or paying in payload for crew life support).