Moon touchdown for Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost lander private spacecraft

The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost - the world's second-ever privately funded spacecraft - has landed on the Moon.

Supported by NASA funding, the Blue Ghost lander launched from a SpaceX rocket in January, and had been set on a course towards the Moon after a short time orbiting Earth. Following a successful landing on Sunday morning, the craft will begin collecting data and generating energy from the sun's rays into its solar panels. This will included using a small vacuum cleaner, the Lunar PlanetVac, to gather dust for scientific analysis.

While most lunar landing missions end after 14 days when the sunlight disappears, scientists hope Blue Ghost will be able to last longer because of its solar technology. A first image beamed back to Earth today showed the probe on the Moon's surface moments after landing.

Founded by rocket scientist Tom Markusic, Firefly is now only the second private sector firm to achieve a soft lunar landing, having carried out the mission under contract from NASA under their CLPS and Artemis programmes. NASA will pay them $101 million (£80 million) as part of the agreement.

Finding a suitable surface to land on was key to a successful deployment of the craft, the team said its inbuilt navigation system had done a "phenomenal" job. Upon the successful landing today, Director of Propulsion Brigette Oakes said: "The navigation system did such a phenomenal job finding what looks like a relatively flat surface for us to land on." As well as hoovering up and storing samples of Moon dust with the the Lunar PlanetVac, the Blue Ghost lander will also test out GPS service on the moon, using ultra-weak signal tracking receivers to try and establish a connection with the satellites in Earth's orbit.

Firefly employees and teams of NASA experts in the mission control room at Cedar Park, Texas hugged, popped champagne corks and celebrated with loud cheers as the landing was confirmed at 2.35am local time (08.35am GMT) on Sunday. Many had been quietly confident of the landing going ahead as hoped. Nicky Fox, head of NASA’s science mission directorate, said: "There was no panic. It was amazing — just everyone was calm, everyone was disciplined. Everybody knew exactly what they were doing. No one had any doubt that we were going to land on the moon tonight."