Two privately-owned spacecraft make contact from the moon

This is a developing story and will be updated as we learn more.

This year’s hot destination is the moon. Two landers built by private companies have just touched down on the moon within a week of each other. One landed softly and safely — a first for any private spacecraft — while the other may have tipped on its side.

“The path to the stars is no longer limited to nations alone,” said Jesus Charles, director of spacecraft operations at Texas-based Firefly Aerospace, after the company’s Blue Ghost lander touched down on March 2. “Blue Ghost’s successful landing proves commercial industry has a critical role in humanity’s journey beyond Earth.”

After a long journey in space — having launched on January 15 — Blue Ghost landed in a volcanic plain on the nearside of the moon called Mare Crisium at 3:34 a.m. EST. It is the first privately built lander to touch down on the moon without crashing or tipping over.

Quick on Blue Ghost’s heels, a robotic lander named Athena, built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, attempted to land on March 6 after only eight days in space. Athena targeted a flat-topped mountain near the moon’s south pole called Mons Mouton, which is believed to be older than the surrounding terrain.

Currently, the lander’s status is unknown. It appears to have touched down, its solar panels are generating power and engineers are able to communicate with the craft. Its orientation and full status have yet to be determined, but the Intuitive Machines team does not think it’s upright.

“I think we can all agree, particularly today, that landing on the moon is extremely hard,” NASA associate administrator Nicky Fox said in a NASA news briefing March 6. Athena “was aiming to land in a place that humanity has not been to before. While we don’t know the exact position of the lander, we do know it is returning data.”

Pictures taken by the lander itself and from an orbiter will clarify things, Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said in the news briefing. But he added, “we don’t believe we’re in the correct attitude with respect to the surface of the moon, yet again.”

In February 2024, Intuitive Machines’ first lander, Odysseus, broke a leg upon landing and fell on its side. A lander called Peregrine from the Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic launched in January 2024 but never made it to the moon. And a lander called Beresheet from an Israeli nonprofit called SpaceIL crashed into the moon in 2019.

Both Blue Ghost and Athena are part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, program, a public-private partnership started in 2018. As part of that program, NASA contracted private companies to send suites of science experiments and technology demonstrations to the moon.

Many of these experiments are designed to pave the way for future human missions. Blue Ghost carries an instrument to measure the stickiness of lunar dust, which can damage equipment and threaten astronauts’ health, as well as a prototype dust shield. The lander’s instruments will also test lunar drilling technology, a new method for soil sample collection, computers that are hardened against harmful space radiation and a GPS-like system for the moon.

NASA and Firefly chose Mare Crisium for Blue Ghost’s landing site due to low levels of magnetic activity compared to other parts of the moon. Earth’s magnetic field is driven by an internal molten core and covers the whole planet. But the moon lacks a molten core, leading to variations in its magnetic field from place to place. Some of Blue Ghost’s instruments will take magnetic field measurements, so the team selected a spot where the moon’s own magnetism would not interfere.

Intuitive Machines’ Athena carried a NASA drill and spectrometer to hunt for water ice, which previous missions have shown is abundant at the south pole. It also brought two rovers and a hopping robot named Grace, after the pioneering computer scientist Grace Hopper, which aims to take data from inside on of the south pole’s permanently shadowed craters. The company is also working with Nokia to test a 4G cellular network on the moon between the hopper and the main spacecraft.

Whether any of these experiments will still be able to go forward will depend on the lander’s orientation, Altemus said.

If all goes well, both spacecraft will observe a total eclipse on March 14. While viewers on Earth will witness a lunar eclipse, as the planet’s shadow passes over the moon, the landers will see a solar eclipse from another world as Earth blocks the sun.

Blue Ghost also plans to capture images of the lunar sunset on March 16 and collect data on a horizon glow caused by levitating lunar dust, first observed by the Apollo 17 astronauts. The lander will operate throughout a lunar day, or about two weeks on Earth, until it gets too dark and cold on the moon for it to continue working.

The CLPS companies regard each other as “competimates,” a mashup of “competitor” and “teammate,” says Firefly engineer Kevin Scholtes. “We’re in this pool together, and there’s a very real quality of, all ships rise with the tide,” he says. “Ultimately, we want each other to be successful.”

This is just the beginning of a parade of private lunar landers. Thirteen American companies are part of the CLPS program, with moon missions planned through 2028. “The goal is to land all over the place,” NASA’s Fox said.

Another lander, called Resilience from Japanese company ispace, launched with Blue Ghost in January but won’t land until May. And a commercial company in China called STAR.VISION plans to launch two small lunar exploration robots with the country’s Chang’e-8 mission in 2028 — the first time China’s national space agency will work with a private company.