Sun Mar 02 07:55:37 UTC 2025: ## US Company Achieves Second Private Moon Landing, First Upright Touchdown
**Washington, March 2, 2025** – Firefly Aerospace made history on Sunday, successfully landing its Blue Ghost spacecraft on the Moon in an upright position, marking only the second successful private lunar landing and the first to achieve a stable, vertical touchdown. The mission, nicknamed “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” touched down near Mons Latreille at approximately 3:34 a.m. EST (0834 GMT).
The lander, about the size of a hippopotamus, launched on January 15th aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and carried ten scientific instruments, including a lunar soil analyzer and a radiation-tolerant computer. Its mission includes capturing high-definition imagery of a total lunar eclipse on March 14th and studying the lunar horizon glow.
This achievement follows Intuitive Machines’ February 2024 landing, which, while historic as the first private US lunar landing since Apollo 17, resulted in a sideways landing that hampered its mission. Blue Ghost’s success is a significant step forward for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, aiming to reduce costs and foster private sector involvement in lunar exploration. The program is part of NASA’s broader Artemis program, which seeks to return humans to the Moon.
Blue Ghost’s landing is also significant because it was achieved autonomously, with the spacecraft navigating the lunar surface and selecting its landing spot. This is a major technological achievement that overcomes some of the challenges of landing on the Moon, which lacks an atmosphere and requires precise thruster control for a soft landing.
Intuitive Machines is scheduled to attempt another landing, the IM-2 mission with the Athena lander, on March 6th. The success of both missions comes amid speculation about potential scaling back or cancellation of the Artemis program in favor of focusing on Mars exploration.
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