NASA has completed the longest commercial Moon surface mission to date, with a two-week operation at the Mare Crisium basin that delivered more payloads than ever before and proved out a range of technologies aimed at paving the way for future lunar exploitation. The mission also provided the first ever high-resolution images of a sunset and total solar eclipse from the Moon’s point of view.
Part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign, the Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission 1 began on 2 March and ended on 16 March 2025, a fortnight’s duration on Earth but the equivalent of one full lunar day plus some lunar night hours.
Beautiful and unusual
Pictures captured show the annular ring of fire of the Sun’s edges behind the Earth and a bright spot where the Sun is emerging from totality, as well as an eerie sunset with the Sun dropping below a black horizon. The moon lacks the atmosphere that creates twilight and makes sunsets appear red from Earth. In one image a mysterious “horizon glow” is visible and analysis may reveal whether it was created by levitating dust as speculated 50 years ago by the last astronaut to set foot on the moon, Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan. “What we’ve got is a really beautiful, aesthetic image showing some really unusual features,” NASA’s Joel Kearns said at a news conference.
Alongside the sunset and eclipse and around 9,000 other photos, the mission deployed an X-ray imager to examine the “interaction of the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field, providing insights into how space weather and other cosmic forces surrounding Earth affect the planet.”
Measuring half way down to Moon’s core
The imager was just one of 10 payloads that were “successfully activated, collected data, and performed operations on the Moon,” NASA said in a press release. The Moon now boasts the deepest robotic planetary subsurface thermal probe, capable of drilling down to 91cm and offering first-of-its kind thermal measurements at varying depths. Another delivery was a sounder that used sensors to study the Moon’s interior by measuring electric and magnetic fields to depths of over 1126km, more than half the distance to the Moon’s core.
Some of the technology was about repelling the Moon’s surface from instruments and equipment, such as an electrodynamic dust shield that “successfully lifted and removed lunar soil, or regolith, from surfaces” and a “Regolith Adherence Characterization instrument” that examined how sticky lunar surface material was on items such as spacesuits, craft and habitats. Conversely, the Lunar PlanetVac’s job is to gather in samples of lunar dust and soil and sort them.
Satellite signals received
Radiation-proof computing was tested as well as the LuGRE receiver, which successfully picked up Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) signals en route to and on the Moon’s surface, from networks such as GPS and Galileo.
With #BGM1 concluded, we'd like to take a moment to appreciate all the hard work that went into this historic mission. To our #GhostRiders who spent over 3 years making #BlueGhost a reality, to our @NASA customer and payload partners who helped give this mission purpose, to our… pic.twitter.com/T20UFb9AYB
— Firefly Aerospace (@Firefly_Space) March 19, 2025
Although the mission saw several firsts, it is far from a one-off. Currently five vendors have been awarded 11 lunar deliveries under NASA’s CLPS programme and they will be sending more than 50 instruments to various Moon locations, including its South Pole and far side.
