Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander, parked on the Moon since early March 2024, is actively exploring the lunar surface for water and other resources. A recently released video provides a fascinating glimpse of Blue Ghost deploying its scientific instruments, including a drill used to gather lunar material and crucial data.
The 30-second video showcases NASA’s Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER) payload in action. This pneumatic, gas-powered drill, developed by Texas Tech University and Honeybee Robotics, is designed to penetrate the lunar surface and measure the temperature and heat flow from the Moon’s interior. The footage captures LISTER’s first operation on the Moon on March 3rd, showing the drill boring into the surface and ejecting lunar material.
Blue Ghost landed in Mare Crisium, a large impact basin filled with basaltic lava, on March 2nd, 2024, at 3:34 a.m. ET. The lander, part of Firefly’s “Ghost Riders in the Sky” mission, carries 10 NASA instruments designed to gather data for future human lunar missions under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. Beyond LISTER, Blue Ghost is conducting various surface operations, including subsurface drilling, sample collection, X-ray imaging, and dust mitigation experiments.
Blue Ghost’s mission is planned for a full lunar day (equivalent to 14 Earth days). The lander recently experienced lunar noon, enduring temperatures reaching up to 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121 degrees Celsius). Firefly implemented power cycling to manage these extreme temperatures, temporarily limiting payload operations to two instruments. Full operational capacity will be restored as lunar surface temperatures decrease.
This successful landing makes Firefly Aerospace the second private company to achieve a soft landing on the Moon and the first to do so with an upright lander. While Intuitive Machines achieved the first private lunar landing in February 2024, both their Odysseus lander and its successor landed on their sides, ultimately failing.
With increasing missions targeting the lunar surface, the Moon is becoming a hub of activity, marking a new era of commercial space exploration.
