A private lunar lander from Firefly Aerospace landed on the Moon today carrying equipment for the US space agency NASA.
The "Blue Ghost" lander descended from lunar orbit on autopilot, aiming for the slopes of an ancient volcanic dome.
"We are on the Moon," Mission Control announced, adding that the lander was "stable."
This landing makes Firefly, a startup founded a decade ago, the first private company to land a spacecraft on the Moon without crashing.
Only five countries have succeeded in this endeavor: Russia, the United States (USA), China, India, and Japan.
Landings by two other companies are hot on the heels of the "Blue Spirit," with the next one expected to join it later this week.
Launched in mid-January from Florida, the lander carried ten experiments to the Moon for NASA.
The space agency paid $101 million for the delivery, plus $44 million for onboard technology. It is the third mission under NASA's Commercial Lunar Delivery Program, which aims to jumpstart a lunar economy of competing private enterprises.
Another lander built and operated by Houston-based Intuitive Machines is scheduled to land on the moon on Thursday. The company attempted its first lander last year, which broke a leg and flipped over.
The Japanese company's third lander is still three months away from landing. Its first lander also crashed in 2023.
The moon is littered with wreckage not only from space, but also from dozens of other failed attempts over the decades.
NASA wants to maintain a pace of two private lunar landings per year, assuming some missions will fail, the space agency's top science officer, Nicky Fox, said.
Unlike NASA's successful Apollo moon landings, which had billions of dollars behind them and astronauts at the helm, private companies are working with limited budgets with robotic spacecraft that must land on their own, said Firefly CEO Jason Kim.
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