Second-ever privately funded space craft touches down on moon

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander has successfully touched down on the moon, in a pivotal moment for private space travel.

The size of a compact car, the four-legged lander is carrying 10 scientific payloads and used 21 thrusters to guide itself to touchdown near an ancient volcanic vent on Mare Crisium, a large basin in the northeast corner of the moon's Earth-facing side.

A smooth upright landing makes Firefly - a decade old startup - the first private company to put a spacecraft on the moon without it crashing or falling over.

Dr Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator at NASA, said this area was of "great scientific interest" but also "a very achievable place to land".

This moment, he said, was "one for the history books".

Firefly becomes the second private firm to score a soft moon landing, after Houston-based Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander made a lopsided soft touchdown last year.

A "soft" moon landing refers to a controlled landing on the moon, where it touches down at a low speed and causes minimal damage to the vehicle. A "hard landing" would be a crash landing.

Only five nations have been successful in soft-landings in the past: the then-Soviet Union, the US, China, India and Japan.

Dr Nicola Fox, from NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said: "We choose our landing sites very carefully.

"This one in this really perfect location, we want to study the geological features on the moon. We want to study the interaction with the solar wind."

She said part of this mission will be to help "prepare for future astronauts" who will go to the moon.

Backed by NASA and its flagship Artemis moon program, private companies have played a significant role in the modern moon race. The moonshot by Firefly, an upstart primarily building rockets, is one of three lunar missions actively in progress.

Two other companies' landers are hot on Blue Ghost's heels, with the next one expected to join it on the moon later this week.

Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin are building landers to put US astronauts on the moon as soon as 2027 - this would be for the first time since 1972.

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