First Full Successful NASA CLPS Lunar Lander Set To End Mission
Photo: Firefly Aerospace
The first fully successful lunar lander mission in the NASA CLPS program is nearly complete. Lunar sunset at Mare Crisium is expected on March 16, 2025, and without sunlight to power the vehicle’s solar panels, the operations of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 will end.
This morning on X.com, Firefly Aerospace said
Notably, the last major act of the lander will be to “capture the sunset glow and dust levitation seen by the Apollo 17 astronauts as they were leaving the Moon.” If Firefly engineers are able to capture that rare and only once-seen phenomena, it will be a fitting finale for a thoroughly successful mission.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
—Dylan Thomas
Sunset On The Moon Is A Very Strange Time There
During the Apollo 17 mission, astronauts observed a faint light near the Moon’s horizon during sunrise and sunset, known as lunar horizon glow. This phenomenon is attributed to the electrostatic levitation of lunar dust particles.
On the Moon’s daylit side, solar ultraviolet and X-ray radiation can cause dust particles to become positively charged, leading them to repel from the surface and rise to altitudes ranging from meters to kilometers.
Conversely, on the night side, dust particles acquire a negative charge due to interactions with the solar wind. At the lunar terminator—the dividing line between day and night—intense electric fields may develop, resulting in horizontal dust transport, sometimes referred to as “Moon storms.”
Blue Ghost will attempt to further measure this phenomenon, as it has only been witnessed once, and that some fifty-three years ago.
This Just After A Solar Eclipse
Two days ago, Blue Ghost captured a solar eclipse, albeit the the first one recorded from the lunar surface — on Earth, a lunar eclipse was underway, and the Earth’s shadow was darkening the face of the moon for observers on the ground.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 successfully landed on the Moon on March 2, 2025, at 3:34 a.m. EST, near Mons Latreille within the Mare Crisium basin. This mission, part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, delivered ten NASA science and technology instruments to the lunar surface.
Photo: Firefly Aerospace
Among the payloads, the Lunar PlanetVac (LPV) successfully collected, transferred, and sorted lunar soil using pressurized nitrogen gas. The Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) operated effectively, demonstrating potential applications in mitigating lunar dust accumulation on various surfaces.
The Next Generation Lunar Retroreflectors (NGLR) provided precise measurements of the Earth-Moon distance, contributing to our understanding of the lunar interior and fundamental physics. The Reconfigurable, Radiation-Tolerant Computer System (RadPC) demonstrated resilience to the Moon’s radiation environment, marking a significant step in developing robust computing technologies for space missions.
Photo: Firefly Aerospace
The Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) successfully received GPS and Galileo signals at lunar distances, proving the viability of using these systems for lunar navigation. The Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER) measured heat flow from the Moon’s interior, providing insights into its thermal properties.
The Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) captured images of Earth’s magnetosphere interacting with the solar wind, enhancing our understanding of space weather phenomena. Additionally, the mission serendipitously captured images of a total lunar eclipse from the Moon’s surface, offering a unique perspective on this celestial event.
NASA awarded Blue Ghost Mission 1 to Firefly Aerospace in February 2021 as part of the NASA CLPS program. The contract was valued at approximately $93.3 million, making Blue Ghost 1 a bargain providing far more scientific returns than it cost.