Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost moon lander is to undertake a record landing on the Moon's Mare Crisium area today, March 2, 2025. The spacecraft will land at 3:34 a.m. EST (0834 GMT), aiming for a large lunar plain on the near side of the Moon.

Released on January 15, 2025, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the 6.6-foot (2-meter)-tall Blue Ghost lander has taken about 45 days to reach the Moon. It is Firefly Aerospace's first try at landing on the Moon. After the success of Intuitive Machines in the recent past, Firefly Aerospace is striving to be the second private aerospace company to pull off this feat.

Blue Ghost, as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, is carrying ten scientific experiments and technology demonstrations intended to aid future human exploration under the Artemis program. The payloads consist of instruments to examine lunar regolith properties, investigate geophysical properties, and explore solar wind interactions with Earth's magnetic field.

The selected landing area, Mare Crisium, is a 500-kilometer-wide lunar basin that provides an exceptional environment for scientific investigation. The mission's goals include examining the characteristics of lunar soil, investigating the geophysical properties of the Moon, and exploring the interaction between the solar wind and Earth's magnetic field.

If successful, Blue Ghost will run on the lunar surface for a complete lunar day, about 14 Earth days, performing experiments and gathering data critical to future missions. This mission is a major milestone in the development of a sustainable human presence on the Moon and a lunar economy.

Live coverage of the landing attempt is being jointly made available by NASA and Firefly Aerospace at 2:20 a.m. EST (0720 GMT). The event may be watched in real-time through NASA's official platforms and on Firefly Aerospace's website