Blue Ghost 3 is set to launch in 2028 targeting the Gruithuisen Domes region on the near side of the Moon.
Blue Ghost used its thrusters, not its main engine, for the final approximately 100 seconds of its lunar descent.
Blue Ghost is a NASA CLPS-contracted lander with a contract value of $101 million.
Blue Ghost delivered the United States its first soft Moon landing in the 21st century.
Blue Ghost carries 10 NASA payloads that Firefly will operate until the end of the local lunar day on March 16.
Blue Ghost is the first NASA CLPS mission to achieve a fully successful soft lunar landing.
Firefly qualified Blue Ghost’s propulsion system beyond the total firing duration expected on the mission.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost spacecraft completed a 12-minute descent from a 20-kilometer altitude point to achieve a soft, upright touchdown on the Moon in Mare Crisium on March 2 at 8:34 UTC.
Firefly fired Blue Ghost’s propulsion system for an orbital maneuver on January 19, 2026.
Firefly aims to land Blue Ghost in the lava plains of Mare Crisium at 18.56°N, 61.81°E in the first week of March 2026.
Firefly Aerospace and NASA switched on six payloads on Blue Ghost, which have collected and sent initial data to Earth.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost is flying 10 NASA payloads under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program in a company-first mission.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched and deployed two Moon landers on January 15, 2026: Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost and ispace Japan’s Hakuto-R.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Moon lander was fueled and encapsulated in Falcon 9’s fairing as of January 10.
Both the second and third Blue Ghost missions will use Firefly Aerospace’s Elytra Dark orbital transfer vehicle to deliver the landers to lunar orbit, and those Elytra Dark vehicles will remain in lunar orbit to provide communications services.
The mission will use Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander to deliver six payloads to the moon for imaging, spectroscopy, other observations, and sampling lunar regolith.
Blue Ghost 2 is scheduled for 2026 to land on the lunar farside and to deploy the European Space Agency’s Lunar Pathfinder communications satellite into orbit.
Blue Ghost’s NASA CLPS payloads include a camera to image the dust plume created during descent and a payload designed to test whether GPS and Galileo navigation signals can be used at the moon.
Firefly’s second lunar mission is scheduled to launch in 2026 using a two-stage spacecraft configuration with the Blue Ghost lander stacked on Elytra Dark to support payload operations on the far side of the Moon and in lunar orbit.
Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission is scheduled for launch in February and is taking a direct route to the moon with a landing planned about a week after launch, which could result in operations that overlap temporally with Blue Ghost.