{"id":249944,"date":"2025-03-02T08:48:27","date_gmt":"2025-03-02T08:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/02\/second-ever-privately-funded-space-craft-touches-down-on-moon\/"},"modified":"2025-03-02T08:48:27","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T08:48:27","slug":"second-ever-privately-funded-space-craft-touches-down-on-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/02\/second-ever-privately-funded-space-craft-touches-down-on-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"Second-ever privately funded space craft touches down on moon"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Second-ever<\/div>\n
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Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander has successfully touched down on the moon, in a pivotal moment for private space travel.<\/p>\n

The size of a compact car, the four-legged lander is carrying 10 scientific payloads and used 21 thrusters to guide itself to touchdown near an ancient volcanic vent on Mare Crisium, a large basin in the northeast corner of the moon’s Earth-facing side.<\/p>\n

Dr Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator at NASA, said this area was of “great scientific interest” but also “a very achievable place to land”.<\/p>\n

This moment, he said, was “one for the history books”.<\/p>\n

Firefly becomes the second private firm to score a soft moon landing, after Houston-based Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander made a lopsided soft touchdown last year.<\/p>\n

A “soft” moon landing refers to a controlled landing on the moon, where it touches down at a low speed and causes minimal damage to the vehicle. A “hard landing” would be a crash landing.<\/p>\n

Only five nations have been successful in soft-landings in the past: the then-Soviet Union, the US, China, India and Japan.<\/p>\n

Dr Nicola Fox, from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said: “We choose our landing sites very carefully.<\/p>\n

“This one in this really perfect location, we want to study the geological features on the moon. We want to study the interaction with the solar wind.”<\/p>\n

She said part of this mission will be to help “prepare for future astronauts” who will go to the moon.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Backed by NASA and its flagship Artemis moon program, private companies have played a significant role in the modern moon race. The moonshot by Firefly, an upstart primarily building rockets, is one of three lunar missions actively in progress.<\/p>\n

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are building landers to put US astronauts on the moon as soon as 2027 – this would be for the first time since 1972.<\/p>\n

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.<\/em><\/p>\n

Please refresh the page for the fullest version.<\/em><\/p>\n

You can receive breaking news alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News app<\/strong><\/a>. <\/em>You can also <\/em>follow us on WhatsApp<\/strong><\/em><\/a> and subscribe to our <\/em>YouTube channel<\/strong><\/em><\/a> to keep up with the latest news.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander has successfully touched down on the moon, in a pivotal moment for private space travel. The size of a compact car, the four-legged lander is carrying 10 scientific payloads and used 21 thrusters to guide itself to touchdown near an ancient volcanic vent on Mare Crisium, a large basin in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/e3.365dm.com\/25\/03\/1920x1080\/skynews-firefly-aerspace-aerospace_6843884.jpg?20250302075949","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[607],"tags":[62609,27220,3891,130846,193616,28,4815],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249944"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249946,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249944\/revisions\/249946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}