March 9, 2025 – The Moon’s surface is hot and sizzling as temperatures rise to a blistering 121°C (250°F) at the height of the lunar day, posing a stiff challenge for Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander. In its seventh day on the Moon, the spacecraft is working at top speed to finish its ambitious scientific tasks under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. With lunar noon bringing increasingly severe heat conditions, Blue Ghost has started power cycling to control its thermal load, a necessary step to keep the lander running in the harsh environment.
Blue Ghost Mission 1, also known as “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” landed safely on March 2 in the vicinity of Mons Latreille in Mare Crisium, a large volcanic depression on the near side of the Moon. Aboard 10 science and technology payloads sponsored by NASA, the lander has already shown impressive accomplishments.
Eight of its instruments, such as the Lunar PlanetVac (LPV), Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER), and Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR), have successfully accomplished their mission objectives. These tools have been hard at work, taking samples of lunar dirt, drilling into the subsurface, and analyzing the interior heat flow of the Moon. They supply crucial information for subsequent Artemis missions, which hope to return human beings to the Moon’s surface.
The increased temperatures, however, are challenging the lander’s endurance. Updates from Firefly Aerospace and posts on X report that the team has transitioned to a policy of deliberate power cycling, temporarily cutting operations to cool Blue Ghost down. The remaining two payloads, still to complete their mission, will continue full activity when temperatures fall later in the lunar day.
This flexibility points to the mission’s engineering vision in response to the Moon’s extreme thermal conditions, which range from scorching heat to icy cold across its 14-Earth-day day/night cycle.
The timing of the mission is paramount. Blue Ghost will run for about two weeks, using solar power to energize its instruments. By March 14, it could record a once-in-a-lifetime lunar eclipse of the Sun from the Moon’s perspective, if it survives. Then, the lander will experience the lunar sunset on March 16, marking the beginning of the end of its main operations as it shuts down into the cold lunar night.
NASA and Firefly Aerospace consider this mission a keystone for commercial lunar exploration. The information obtained may unlock knowledge of the Moon’s mantle, subsurface resources, and radiation environment—essential elements for a sustainable human presence on the lunar surface and en route to Mars missions. Despite the heat, Blue Ghost’s achievement highlights the promise of private spaceflight, with Firefly hailing what they say is the most successful soft landing by a commercial spacecraft to date. Throughout the lunar day, all attention is on Blue Ghost, competing against the heat to secure its place in space history.